syt228

Self-Introduction

My name is Sydney Thompson and I am a second-year student at Lehigh University. I am studying Journalism & Sociology with a minor in Marketing. I am from Eaton Rapids, Michigan and I love my time so far at Lehigh! At Lehigh, I am a part of the Lehigh Women’s Wrestling program. Additionally, I write for the Brown & White’s sport section and am an associate editior.

Learn more about me on my Page

Class work for Data Journalism

Lehigh-Focused Projects

Many of my projects during this class used data about or from Lehigh. I was able to examine different things about the university, from enrollment to student’s preferences for partying. Some of the projects included national high education data to see how Lehigh fits into the broader collegite scope within the United States.

The Brown & White: Growing & Changing

During this project I found infomration about the history and creation of Lehigh’s student-run newspaper, The Brown and White. This is a brief overview of the Brown and White and how it has changed over the years.

Lehigh Undergraduate Intercollegite Programs

During this project I used Lehigh’s undergraduate enrollment data for the different colleges and intercollegiate programs. I was able to use DataWrapper to get this data and make is easily digestable to viewers using a pie chart.

Link to Dataset

Where do Lehigh students like to party?

For this project I looked at data from 2016 where students answered a survey about partying, their demographic and how they felt about it. I used Tableau to create this vizualization to show the data.

This is my second dashboard for the project, where I added group affiliations for the data. Viewers can see groups people are a part of and their preferences in party locations compared to gender.

Higher Education Data in 2013

For this project I looked at IDEPS data from 2013 to look at the different univerities, data about them and what they offer. I used Tableau to create this vizualization to show the data.

Link to Dataset

Next, I used data from 2022-2023 about public schools to show the differences in enrollment, size, virtual standing due to COVID-19 and other data. I used Tableau to represent this data so that users can see the differences in school levels, enrollment along with location.

Link to Dataset

Worldwide Food & Restaurant Trends

This next section of projects shows food, drink and restaurant trends. I looked at beverage company leaders and differences in cutlture, like tipping, in different countries.

Tipping: Europe vs. United States

For this project I used DataWrapper to use data from YouGov to gather data about the variety of tipping culture people have in the home countries. The data was vizualized to show if people often tipped or not at different businesses and compared that to other countries. This allows for viewers to easily see how tipping culture varies between countries and businesses.

Billions by Beverage Companies

During this project, I decided to look into the world’s largest beverage companies. I wondered who was leading the world in sales; American companies? Companies with products I often drank? During my research I looked into sales (listed in millions of USD) with the most sales in 2024. This data, shown in the infographic below, shows who led the world last year and sales and gives readers an idea of who will lead this year. I personally was suprised that Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. weren’t the highest companies. This data made me more aware of leading compaines that often get sales in other continent and countries in relation to common beverage companies I see in the U.S.

Link to Dataset

Beverage Companies Leaders in 2025

For this project I looked at eight of the world’s leading beverage companies. Together, these corporations shape the international beverage industry through innovation, marketing and sustainability initiatives across categories like soft drinks, coffee, beer, spirits, and energy drinks.

Link to Dataset