Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Student visualizes homelessness with d3.js

Luís Melgar is one of our data journalism, visualization, and infographics graduates. For his Masters thesis he decided to do a data-driven story about student homelessness in Florida. This is a problem that is often overlooked by the media.

Many figures presented here are impressive. The number of homeless* students more than doubled between 2005 and 2014. In some counties, one out of five students lack a stable home.

The charts and maps were done mostly with d3.js, and the project looks good on mobile (I'm making my clases mobile-first beginning in the Fall this year, by the way.) Take a look at it.

*A homeless student is not a kid who lives on the street. According to the project, ‘the public education system says that a student is homeless when he or she lacks "a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence," or if they share a home with other people "due to loss of housing" or "economic hardship.”’ As the story shows, this may have serious consequences on a student's performance.