If your ears, like mine, automatically fill with white noise whenever you hear the word ‘Data’, boy are you in for a revelation! Data ain’t just about the numbers – data backs up claims, conditions our judgement of fact and fiction, and pretty much powers journalism. This was the topic of this week’s CJS lecture delivered by course leader Glyn Mottorshead.

We were also taught how to use some of the basic – and not so basic – data mapping tools. After running into a bit of a java/firewall/scripting block when trying to use the pretty wordle tool, I decided to put some of Glyn’s lecture into practice.
Here is my geobatch mapping the number of children injured in road traffic accidents across Wales from 1995-2000:
Children injured in car accidents
I will also try and upload a wordle map as soon as I can work out how to persuade my computer that it’s not an evil hacking thing.