Class blog – Page 43 – Online Reporting, Research & Writing

RAM prices on the rise

For my data story I would like to report on the rise in the price of RAM, specifically DDR3 and DDR4 RAM. A good data set to do this is found on PCpartpicker.com under their memory price trends. PC part picker is a website that tracks the prices of computer parts on multiple websites such as Amazon, B&H photo, and Newegg. The nice thing about this data is that it is broken up into several categories like 2×4’s and 2×8’s, like this graph of DDR4 3000 4×4 kits.

ddr4_3000_pricetrends

The memory price trend is fascinating to me because of the shortage of fast high capacity RAM and the inability for the manufacturers to keep up with demand as well as the obsoletion of DDR3 in recent months. These data sets could be shown next to the release dates of the processors that made DDR3 obsolete and the enormous jumps in price they caused. I could also report on how the companies that consume RAM far exceed the companies that manufacture RAM and how that lead to the inflation in price.

The Oscoda Press uses Facebook to reach out to locals

I chose to write about the Oscoda Press. Oscoda is a small town located in northern Michigan near the Au Sable River, that enters Lake Huron. The Oscoda Press writes articles on what’s happening locally. It includes the Oscoda Press in newspaper form or e-Edition.

The only social media that the Oscoda Press uses is Facebook. The publication posts the articles that it writes on to Facebook for people that use Facebook more often, rather than going on to the official website. It makes it easier for people to read on what’s going on in town.

The world and U.S population

On the census website, there are tons of infographics and visualizations that anyone can have access to. I choose to write about two images that I wanted to compare. The images relate to the population of the world and in the U.S in 2016 and 2017.

I wanted to see how much the world and U.S population increased, so I took the respective populations and subtracted it to find the difference.

In a year, the world’s population increased by 82,093,713. For the U.S, the population increased by 2,661,396.

This data set enhances my reporting because it is a simple report on the world and U.S population. It shows the population right next to an image of the world or the U.S.

U.S Census 2016 population estimate

U.S Census 2017 population estimate

Tracking Solar Activities

I found this cool data base site that allows one to track solar radiation and other cosmic activities thats free for the public use. This site allows one to stay up to date on whats taking place above them which can helps one to avoid, and or prepare for dangerous solar radiation and or other cosmic events.

We all have seen the many different weather upheavels lately, and some has been caused by solar radiation and other solar activities which has aided towards the floods, droughts, meteorites and etc. Its very benificial to be able to have a reliable data base accessible for the publics use for information on current solar events and activities.

The National Solar Radiation Data (NSRD), provides comprehensive information for the United States and other international locations. This site is also growing daily to stay up to date and informative which makes it a lot more easier to stay informed.

Super Blue Blood Moon Eclipse!

There will be a special event that will take place on the 31st of Jan, so mark your calendars! There will be a super blood moon eclipse taking place in the heavens and it will be visible for many. Eclipses take place every time the earth moves between the sun and moon.

This eclipse will be even more bigger than the average eclipse and its being called a blue moon because this phenomenon seems to only happen”every blue moon”, marking it the second full moon in a monthly cycle.

Lastly, we haven’t experience this type of phenomenon in our lifetime because it happen 150 years ago, and so I just had to share this news. For more information like time and specifics on where to get the best views as far as location, you can click on the link here.