One of the big areas of focus for technology companies over the past year has been “big data” — in other words, the idea that there can be a lot of value in finding patterns in the massive quantities of user data and other information that a business generates. This has a corollary in journalism too: namely, the growing realization that there is a lot of value in finding patterns in news-related information. This weekend saw the launch of an e-book that could be a useful resource for anyone planning to explore that field: The Data Journalism Handbook.