A couple of interesting articles from the weekend
20 February 2012 09:34:00
The NY Times Magazine carried not one but two interesting articles yesterday. The first, by Charles Duhigg, about how companies learn from and exploit your shopping habits, is here. It's pretty interesting, because whether or not you are curious about the numbers, everyone, here in the US at least, has to shop.
The second article is Nate Silver's "Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent," part of a series he's working on for the Magazine in conjunction with his blog. It's a fascinating comparison of the comparative electability, as they look now, of Republican Presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. It's clearly written, with good graphics, including an interactive chart looking at chances of winning the popular vote in varying economic (and presidential popularity) circumstances, and well worth reading.
Outsiders and data analysis
17 February 2012 05:55:00
Here's a nice little article from the NY Times Sports section, describing the role outsiders -- who are not acculturated to an organization's biases or mindset -- can play when they take large datasets and start thinking about them. The article hook is a freelance analyst (and FedEx truck driver) who predicted at the time of the 2010 draft that Jeremy Lin would be a good point guard. Two things to keep in mind: the more data sets out there, the more people there are who can look at them. And if more people looking at them, more good ideas are bound to appear.
Code for America
16 February 2012 13:32:00
You've probably heard of Teach for America, and VISTA, both of which place recent college graduates (and others) in teaching and service jobs, respectively, in high need areas. Now there's a new organization called Code for America, which pays recent college graduates a small stipend to work with city governments "to build and enhance Internet tools that bolster civic engagement." Code for America works with partner cities--this year they include Austin, Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Honolulu, Macon, Philadelphia, and Santa Cruz--and provides them with techies--CfA Fellows--who help them solve data problems. The Fellows program solutions, some for the cities, and others shared on the Code for America website.
Code for America's Brigade calls on developers, designers, and community leaders to use the web, and available government data, to address problems by developing apps, sometimes with the support of the fellows. And the apps are pretty great. SnapFresh helps users find retailers who will accept food stamps by texting their location: the app will text back addresses of and directions to the five nearest food stores. (It works by text. you don't need a smartphone.) It works in every city in every state in the country. Where's My School Bus? allows Boston parents to track their kids' bus (the app requires the Boston Public Schools to verify that the user is a parent or guardian). Lunch Roulette arranges lunch dates among employees within organizations who might not otherwise meet.
An incubator for startups that will draw on open data to provide faster, better and easier services will launch later this year.
It's an election year! Time to start obsessing about polling
15 February 2012 15:07:00
Let's start with Presidential approval ratings.
According to a CBS News poll released yesterday, President Obama's are up, reaching 50% for the first time since May, 2011:
CNN's polls say the same thing. So do Rasmussen Reports, which says that 49% approve of the President, and that 49% disapprove. They display the data differently:
What's going on here? I suspect it's in the way the questions are asked and the data tabulated. If CBS and CNN subtracted the lukewarm approvals from the strong approvals, you might get the 27% strong approvals that Rasmussen reports. But it appears that right now there are more people expressing strong and lukewarm approval than there are expressing disapproval. The takeaway? If you can, look at more than source for information. And think about how each organization is reporting its data. And right now, in a head-to-head competition, even Rasmussen reports that Obama beats Santorum and Romney.
Which is what Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight (now a part of the New York Times) reports as well. I should say that's what Silver concludes, as he is using an early stage model taking account of the economy, each candidate's ideology, and the approval ratings. He also has some projections about upcoming Republican primaries (in Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Ohio). FiveThirtyEight is a great site, and I'll be keeping an eye on it in the coming months. Even though the election is still nine months away.
Safety net issues
13 February 2012 05:46:00
Update February 17: Here's a link to Paul Krugman's column on this article, titled "Moochers Against Welfare." It's worth reading all the way through to his apt conclusion.
In case you missed it yesterday, or read it before you had your coffee, take a look at this NY Times article about the increasing reliance on government programs around the United States. The reporters took a hard look at entitlement programs and who uses them. The tables are pretty good, and the interactive charts are even better, allowing readers to click on any county in the US and to see transferred income per capita, the share the transfer income is of all income in the county, and a comparison to the US average. The takeaway is that everyone uses government entitlements, including those who object to them.
Here's a screenshot of the map, showing Sumter County, Alabama, which I chose randomly:
The maps also break out different entitlements programs, including Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Income Support, Veterans Benefits, and Unemployment Insurance. (It would have been helpful if the Times had included numbers of people receiving benefits, but they didn't.) And the article includes a nice statement by a political scientist about how the states that receive more benefits than they pay in taxes tend to vote Republican, while states that pay out more than they receive tend to vote Democratic.
There's an argument being made that the inclusion of veterans benefits is a mistake, as they are earned by service to the country, and in any case drive up payment of government benefits in the south. I disagree with the first point (and let me be clear, I am not arguing against payment of benefits to veterans, I just see no reason not to include them in this analysis). As for the second, according to the Times, veterans benefits account for only 0.4% of personal income in 2009, compared to 17.6% for all government benefits. That's too small to drive any of these numbers. There has been a series of articles recently about the transformation of the VA medical system into a model of good care. Here's one from a couple of years ago.
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