New at latimes.com: California Schools Guide

Our newest database project, launched today, is a guide to schools in California with test scores, demographics and other useful info on public schools in the state. (Private schools are listed too, but there’s less good info available on them.)

Data guru Ben Welsh (of L.A.’s Top Dogs fame) is the brains behind this project, also built in Django (which, it’s safe to say, has become the framework of choice for our editorial data projects).

I think my favorite part is the ability to rank schools in your county by different criteria, such as average SAT scores or API score (California’s benchmark for academic performance). Factoid: Of the 10 schools statewide with the highest API scores, eight are in the Bay Area and four of those are in Fremont. Is it something in the water up there?

New at latimes.com: L.A.’s Top Dogs

Last week we launched a fun new database at work: L.A.’s Top Dogs, which shows the most common dog names and breeds by ZIP code, based on dog registration data from L.A. County animal control agencies. My colleague, Ben Welsh, assembled the data and built the app in Django. I did the UI.

Warning: It’s pretty addictive. For example, if you ever wanted to know how many dogs are named after your favorite superheroes, dictators and hip-hop stars, we can tell you.

It’s already drawn some notice in the linkosphere:

It’s taken some criticism from folks who seem to think it’s not serious journalism. To those people I say: You’re right. Lighten up. We do a lot of other serious journalism.