wrangling data

PART ONE: DATA CHARTS

In the World Bank Data index, I was curious about Morocco’s metrics. My family is from there, so it is like a second home to me, but to many other Westerners it’s an exotic location waiting to be explored. I looked up the tourism statistics, which are numbered by the arrivals to the country each year. I saw it has been on a steady rise since 1995, with sometimes spiking up by 300,000–900,000 new arrivals each year.

According to CGTN Africa in an article published in February 2020, tourism makes up 7% of Morocco’s GDP, which accounts for approximately 80 billion MAD, or around 7.5 billion dollars. At over 13 million arrivals, 2019 had its highest record number of tourists. I think I might have been among those numbers myself.

The years where I noticed a spike in arrivals are highlighted in the chart I made myself. Between ’97 to ’00, almost a million and a half more people visited Morocco. This was also a fairly significant time period for Morocco, where its beloved king Hassan II passed away in July 1999, marking the beginning of his son’s reign, who is the current king. The succession of powers was a mournful time for the country; my mother still talks about how incredible of a leader Hassan II was. I can’t say for sure if this event correlates with the spike of tourism, but those visiting the country were certainly witnessing a great change in the attitudes of the people.

2013 was understandably a big year for the country, as the FIFA World Cup was hosted by Morocco. After that, what sparked people’s intrigue in Morocco could be that it’s been historically a vacation spot for its former colonizers, the French and Spanish. For others interested in visiting the country, perhaps influencers taking stylish photos in the courtyard of Moroccan riads was compelling enough for travelers to make their journey.

PART TWO: ARTICLE REACTIONS

Story 1: Basic Steps in Working with Data by Steve Doig

Prior to taking this class, I never viewed data as a storyteller in itself; instead, I saw it as a tool storytellers used to demonstrate their claims. A lot of findings in this article didn’t necessary surprise me, but just further solidified that data can tell stories that even deter you from your initial idea. An example given was the story of the data journalists who were researching how different judges served different punishments of crimes, and how they missed vital information by a mislabeling in the data. Once they realized the “no punishment” response actually meant a community service penalty, it added another layer to their research altogether.

Story 2: Cleaner, Smarter Spreadsheets Start with Structure by Sandhya Kambhampati

Structure and organization are the key elements to an excel spreadsheet. Before taking this class, data structuring and utilizing excel seemed like an overly complicated mechanism, at times even an art form. But organization is something I enjoy doing, in ways that have nothing to do with spreadsheets.

“The hardest part about seeing a poorly structured file is knowing that the person spent a lot of time creating it, but that, in the end, it may be unusable.” This really stuck with me and I will keep it in mind as I make spreadsheets. Getting creative with it is fine as long as the structure itself is strong and comprehensive.