THREE LEVELS OF BRIDGING THE GAP
SOURCES
Our data comes from the Stanford Open Policing Project, which started in 2015.
The full data set covers over 100 million traffic stops nationwide. For this project, we opted to study the data from San Francisco, which included observations on driver demographics, geographic location, time, and more. As we initially approached our data, we considered the several implications and silences that existed beyond just the raw information. We conducted an extensive data cleaning process, removing many observations with missing variables, to give us a robust data set to work with. The digital nature of our data set made such processes possible and easy to manage. As outlined by Johanna Drucker, in The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship, the goals of digital humanities projects are to engage with sources that are either analog or “born-digital,” analyze their data and metadata using digital tools, and present their messages through accessible, digital platforms. We kept these goals in mind as we approached our original data set and secondary sources. We fully leveraged the digital format of Stanford’s findings to make our processing and presentation efforts more easily completed and accessible.
PROCESSING
The dataset was cleaned and formatted using R Studio and visualized through Tableau.
Each row in the cleaned data represents an individual vehicle stop by police in San Francisco. The data set was then refined to specifically look at police-initiated traffic stops and have mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive data that will help us analyze demographic, locational, and time-related trends to vehicle stops. The standardization of the data was done to better categorize observations into analyzable categories. This allowed the visualization process in Tableau to more effectively compare trends across the different variables.
PRESENTATION
We used the website-designing software WordPress.
From the class reading, The Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design by Ben Shneirdermanm, we kept in mind the importance of consistency, universal usability, and easy reversal of actions. WordPress allows us to prioritize key web design strategies. Not only is it easy to familiarize yourself with, but it was extremely accessible for students without coding knowledge and limited technological backgrounds. WordPress allowed us to select from a variety of themes to tailor our project to the needs of our research and aesthetic preferences.
Our visualizations kept the foundational skills from lectures and class readings in mind. The FlowingData article, Foundational Visualization Skills, highlights the importance of choosing the right chart for what we want to communicate, and the clearest way to show information to a non-technical audience. We kept these factors in mind while choosing the best visualizations for each of our research questions.
SOURCES
Click the link below to access the annotated bibliography for sources that contributed to the creation of this project.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Immense gratitude and appreciation are dedicated to the following individuals
Cameron Manning
For his unwavering guidance, continued support, and insightful clarification throughout the entire process of the research, development, and meticulous structuring of the project. His expertise and encouragement have been instrumental in shaping each phase, ensuring the project’s success, and providing invaluable direction that has allowed us to navigate challenges with confidence and conceptual understanding.
Professor & Dr. Wendy Kurtz
For her exceptional ability to develop and expertly guide the team through the diverse range of tools, techniques, and strategies utilized during the development, data accumulation, and research phases of the project. Her leadership not only facilitated a smooth and efficient workflow but also provided essential insights and practical advice that empowered the team to overcome challenges, refine methodologies, and achieve key milestones with precision and confidence.