Most journalists are just like Gilbert, with daily computer skills that include Internet searches, word processing, and maybe some basic calculations in Excel, none of which enables journalists to truly mine large collections of data. Meanwhile, the amount of raw data available to journalists has mushroomed. At the federal level, the Obama administration’s “open government” initiative has given rise to new sources like Data.gov, a website devoted to the aggregation and easy dissemination of national data sets.

via Serious Fun With Numbers : CJR.