A City With Data
24 May 2018SCT Part 0
Driven To It
At one geo-software hands-on training I attended. A colleague alluded to the instructor, during feedback time, that it would be great if the training providers used data with a local context. In defence the instructor indicated the concept(s) being taught remained the same. I couldn’t help thinking though how I struggled remembering place names of the data we wrangled. Yes, it had a location but it would have been even better if it were from a place I knew. That somehow takes away a layer of learning hindrance.
I also recently (May 2018) bumped into a job advert for a GIS/Location Intelligence Market Analyst.It was (is) a fascinating job, requiring an intriguing skill set. I struck on the idea of evaluating how well I would fare if I was hired for such a post.[Personal box ticking]. Additionally, constantly in my tweeter feeds. There is much chatter on Data Science, Data Analyst, R, TidyVerse, SQL, JavaScript, Visualisations …[well, must be who I chose to follow, but the fact that I hadn’t unfollowed them was an indication of interest in the topic(s) . ]
So, I will start on a Blog Series - Spatial CapeTown (SCT) with the objective of, well, having a more focused approach to my blogging:
- Improve my writing skills. (Writing tutorials/ reports that are easy to follow).
- Develop and improve work flows while using exclusively FOSS. (So that the workflows are reproducible, software availabiity angle)
- Data massage and honing. (Local context data - the City of Cape Town in particular).
- Improve data analysis and Interpretation skills (Draw insights about the City from the data).
As a spin-off I hope to have fun and quench my insatiable desire for cool visualisations and code in software packages.
The City of Cape Town has a magnificent spatial data viewer from where one can find a ton of information about the city. If you are a tinkeror though, you also want access to the raw data. Frame your own questions and answer them yourself or answer unasked questions while playing with the data . So this series of blog posts is an alternative window to the wealth of spatio-temporal information about the City of Capetown. It will border on data manipulation to statistical inference about matters and phenomena.
On twitter ~ #spatialcct
#PostScript - Disclaimer
The proceeding work is no way authoritative and is purely my work in my personal capacity and not representative of City of Cape Town authority. It is neither official communication nor authoritative data dissemination. Consider it a weekend hack by a fanatic in some garage with data gotten off the internet.