Initial outline draft.

Author: onyxfish

.gitignore

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+*.pyc
+*.swp
+*.swo

README.md

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+Information Management for Journalists
+======================================
+
+Introducing data
+----------------
+
+* Types of data:
+    * Simple types
+        * Numbers (bytes, ints, floats)
+        * Text (chars, strings)
+        * Boolean
+        * Enumerations
+        * Binary blobs (images)
+    * Complex types
+        * Lists (1D)
+        * Tables (2D)
+        * Relationships (3 or more dimensions)
+        * Objects (hierarchical data)
+* Metadata:
+    * Unique ids
+    * Constraints ("business rules")
+
+
+Storing data
+------------
+
+* Lists: Plain text
+* Tables: Spreadsheets (CSV, Excel, Google Docs)
+* Relationships: SQL Databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, sqlite)
+* Objects: Flat-files (JSON, YAML) or Object Databases (MongoDB, CouchDB)
+
+
+Tracking changes
+----------------
+
+* What constitutes a change in version?
+* The timestamp: atomic unit of change
+* Sometimes it makes sense to record that things don't change too
+* Files and folders (a.k.a naming things)
+    * Always name from less specific to more specific
+    * Always timestamp things you're changing
+    * Always make copies (you have unlimited hard drive space--use it)
+* Dropbox: The poor man's version control
+* git: The engineer's version control
+    * git in 5 minutes
+    * Commit messages matter
+    * Works for text formats (CSV, flat files), but not for binaries
+    * Not designed for big data
+* Change tables and data warehouses: creating problems to solve problems
+
+
+Data pipelines
+--------------
+
+* Why repeatable processes?
+    * Ensure clear provenance of the data
+    * Depend against attacks on integrity
+    * Self-documenting workflow
+    * Show your work
+* Acquisition
+    * Ways to get data
+        * Curl
+        * APIs
+        * Scrapers
+    * Documenting provenance
+* Processing
+    * Scripts
+        * Bash scripts
+        * csvkit
+        * Python
+    * Documenting order of operations
+    * Naming things; revisited
+* Shims, adapters and glue code
+* Crons
+