Category: How To
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How we create custom charts using Flourish and Figma
At The Outlier we publish a lot of static graphics and we like to apply our own styles. Here’s how we do it using Flourish and Figma.
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Simple guide to scraping data from PDFs
Papers, PDFs and poorly scanned documents are the way most data journalism projects begin. But instead of typing up a new spreadsheet, here’s how to use Adobe Acrobat DC to do all the hard work for you.
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10 spreadsheet formulas we use to superpower our data analysis
Both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are powerful spreadsheet programmes for storing and sorting through mounds of data. Here are our favourite formulas for making sense of data.
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How to make a Zimbabwean elections map
In the latest in our series on creating African election maps, we explain how to find data on Zimbabwean elections and how to map it.
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Working with Open Street Map vector data in QGIS
When we teach data journalism most people are eager to make a map but they’re usually unsure of where to get data for a map. And while there are many good sources for map data, if you’re looking for something, like a particular town or neighbourhood, that’s not always so easy. One solution is to…
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How to extract multiple features from a shapefile in QGIS
This guide will help you find and extract features from a larger map into a smaller one. In this example, selected rivers in South Africa are copied into a new GeoJSON format file.
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10 steps to create a custom Svelte component library
Although creating complex sites with multiple components in SvelteKit is pretty simple already, creating a library for your most regularly used components adds even more power to your projects.
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Loading non-essential data behind the scenes in Svelte
Streaming promises makes it simple to fetch data without having the page wait for non-essential data requests to complete before starting to render.
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Remove features from a map with QGIS
There are two small research islands more than 2,000km off the coast of South Africa. When mapping SA data, you generally don’t want to include them. Luckily, it is simple enough to remove the islands in QGIS.
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Creating a grid overlay for a map using QGIS
There are a number of reasons you may want to make a grid of points covering a geographic area. In my case, I wanted to work out which point in South Africa was the furthest from a police station.