Earning Criteria

• Finding Data:  Identify high-value data for your project.  Consider best practices for writing with data.  Spot insights for stories.  Practice writing narratives with numbers.  Craft data-driven presentations people will remember.
• Extracting Data: Covers the basic tools for liberating data from the web, documents and other formats as well as understanding the power of spreadsheets.  Holders of this badges are able to unlock data trapped in websites using free tools transform locked data in PDF's and other file formats into information ready for analysis scrape data from the web using free tools.
• Cleaning and Analyzing Data: Holders of this badge are able to standardize dirty data and prepare it for analysis. Bodge holders are able to identify the pitfalls of working with dirty data standardize data so it is uniform and ready for reliable analysis analyze data using basic spreadsheet functions  manipulate data using spreadsheet tools such as pivot tables, and learn how journalists take a dataset and turn it into a narrative.
• Visualizing Data,: Badge holders have sound methods for assessing data visually and using reliable, free tools for data visualizations. Badge earners are able to discover the fundamental concepts of quality data visualizations, design simple data graphics using spreadsheet functions, master basic data mapping skills, and sequence data by constructing timelines.
• Data Narrative: Earners have demonstrated best practices for presenting a compelling data narrative, including methods for ensuring the accuracy of their data, writing with numbers and presenting powerful data stories.  Badge holders are able to: organize complex data into story components, negotiate with team members on most effective storytelling approaches, critique the strength and weaknesses of data-driven stories, and write and present a powerful, data-driven story.