This week I chose to examine a data set regarding Immigration Workshops in LA, and because I didn’t quite understand what was going on in my data, I turned to my lovely tool WTFcsv to help me dissect the information.
The Ontology
This dataset is organized by date, organization, site name, location, start time, end time, free/not free, other notes, and who to contact for the workshop. The information would be generally helpful for immigrants interested in the workshops, as well as event planners, and other people coordinating similar events. Because the dataset is also within the public city collection, the information it provides is also very important to government officials or organization representing immigrants minority communities.
What Does it Mean?!
There are a number of interesting conclusions we can reach with this data set. One interesting I noticed is that a large majority of immigration workshops held in LA are being hosted in libraries – specifically cultural libraries. The three most frequented libraries are the Chinatown Branch Library (126), Pio Pico – Koreatown Branch Library (110), and the El Sereno Branch Library (110). I think it’s also interesting that every immigration workshop is free, or at most is free but with limited seating. And I also find it incredible that the same man, Jonathan Fein Proano, is the person of contact for literally hundreds of these workshops. Although there are some interesting points we can conclude from existing information, there are still a good number of records missing. For example, the records only contain information from January of 2015, so it would be helpful to know any information about immigration workshops pre-2015.
If I were to re-do the ontology of this dataset from the point of view of a citizen interested in a workshop, I’d probably put the contents of the workshops first. Many of the notes just list “citizen class” or “learn to pass the citizen test” instead of in-depth information of the contents of the workshop, but I may want to know what topics are covered in each workshop. I would also add a section for a web page for easy access to each workshop rather than just a point of contact and a phone number. Otherwise most of the other information would be helpful for most anyone interested in immigration workshops.
I like this post because subtitles really help me to read. You broke it down to three part: brief introduction, ontology, and your perspective and suggestion. Not bad.:)