Christine Zhang
Christine Zhang is a data journalist at The Baltimore Sun, where she reports news stories using data analysis and statistics. Before joining The Sun in 2018, she worked as a data scientist at Two Sigma and was previously an OpenNews fellow at the Los Angeles Times and a research analyst at the Brookings Institution. She has a B.A. from Smith College and an M.A. from Columbia University.
Recent Articles
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Old Bay gets all the credit. Meet J.O., the seasoning that crab houses use.
To Marylanders, Old Bay is more than a seasoning: It’s a symbol of state pride. The yellow and blue tin with a red lid is tattooed on calves or placed in window sills along with a crab and decorative mallets. A T-shirt proclaims: “I put Old Bay on my Old Bay.” 83% of the state’s residents reported...
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Analysis of ransomware used in Baltimore attack indicates hackers needed 'unfettered access' to city computers
Officials in the eastern North Carolina city of Greenville arrived to work one morning in early April to find the files on some 800 of their computers locked up. More than five weeks later, they’re still recovering from the debilitating cyberattack. The city of around 92,000 realized April 10 it...
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Public data on crime, parking tickets and more no longer being updated amid Baltimore ransomware attack
The ransomware attack on government computers in Baltimore City has affected various agencies’ day-to-day activities. It has also halted scheduled updates to several government datasets on Open Baltimore, the city’s open data website. Some geospatial datasets on the Baltimore City Open GIS Data...
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Maryland’s prison population drops to 1980s levels, continuing a multiyear decline
Maryland’s prison population has fallen below 18,000 for the first time in nearly three decades. According to a report released Wednesday by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based nonprofit that tracks criminal justice issues, 17,815 people were held in Maryland’s state prisons at the...
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What you need to know about the 2020 census
No joke: It may be called Census Day, but April 1 isn’t actually the day the Census Bureau will start mailing out its 2020 census forms. That would be March 12. Nor is it the day your census form is “due” (sorry, Jon Stewart). The final reminder postcard is set to go out in late April 2020, with...
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Baltimore sees biggest population loss in single year since 2001, census estimates show
The U.S. Census Bureau’s annual population estimates have rarely brought good news for the city of Baltimore in recent years. The latest release is no exception. The city lost 7,346 people, or 1.2% of its population, during the 12 months that ended July 1, 2018, according to census figures published...
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Breaking down the fluctuating price of Baltimore Mayor Pugh's 'Healthy Holly' books
The market for Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh's “Healthy Holly” books has fluctuated rapidly over the past eight years — from $5-per-book when she was a state senator in 2011 to $9-per-copy after she was sworn in at City Hall in 2016. The price listed on Pugh’s Healthy Holly books is $9 each, but...
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After years of failing to get Baltimore's vacants below 17,000, city launches a new push to reverse the trend
The number of vacant houses in Baltimore has remained stubbornly flat for a decade — almost 17,000 abandoned buildings blighting the city’s streets. And for every one knocked down or fixed up, a new one appears somewhere else. But city Housing Commissioner Michael Braverman says his team is finally...