New at latimes.com: Slice and filter California election results

Eric Ulken on November 5, 2008

In my last few weeks at the Times, I’ve largely been preoccupied with imagining and building our election data widgets for use on election night.  It might seem silly to spend so much time preparing for an event that’s over so quickly.  But I think we’ve found at least one app that’ll last long enough to make it worth the effort.  It’s our California county-by-county map, and I think it’s way cool.

Sure, you can see bubbles by county for the state propositions and the presidential race, but you can also slice the vote by demographic categories (e.g.., counties that went for Bush in 2004) to see if you can spot trends. Happy filtering.

(Credit where it’s due: The filters are inspired by NYT’s excellent county-by-county maps during the primary season.)

New at latimes.com: California Schools Guide

Eric Ulken on September 4, 2008

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?