4 ms·

Finalists for the Apps for America/Data.gov Contest

24 points by cjoh 17y ago

jrwoodruff 17y ago
As a techie and journalist, I'm all for more open government and the movement to put more government data online. But at the same time I find some of these sites, particularly from this list Data Masher, somewhat disturbing. For those unfamiliar with it, Data Masher allows you to combine two data sources with simple operators (+,-, etc.) and create maps and tables with the results. But how informative is this, really? Does dividing"Violent Crime rate per 100k pop" with the "percent of households with firearms" result in any sort of useful statistic? No, since violent crimes covers a broad swath of criminal activity, including rape and aggrevated assault, which may or may not involve a gun. I would argue presenting this manner of dis-information as having any kind of factual validity is just irresponsible. It also seriously irks me that most, if not all, of the data provided lacks any kind of study details, even basics such as margin of error or sample size. Unless I'm seriously missing something, there is no way to measure the accuracy or validity of these statistics other than to say "Oh, well that data's from the CDC so it must be accurate." After all, the government IS always right. Not good enough.
jberryman 17y ago
thisweknow.org is fairly cool
- jrwoodruff 17y ago
  Yea, actually. it has potential. I'd like to see richer linking, i.e. give me the material safety data sheet and a laymans definition of toluene when I click on it, rather than the current 'chemical.' But that may be in the pipeline. Overall, though, it's facts nicely reorganized in a sensible and informative manner. That's moving in the right direction.
  - btucker 17y ago
    Thanks! (I'm one of the programmers) Yeah, that kind of stuff definitely is in the pipeline, as is just adding lots more data. We felt from the beginning that is was the linking between the datasets that was most interesting. Unfortunately, we found this much more challenging once we started trying to do it since there is surprisingly little standardization in how different agencies report things. Longer-term we're hoping to try to crowd source this kind of thing. So say you found the material safety data for toluene, you could link that up. Anyway, thanks for checking it out!

24 points by cjoh 17y ago

As a techie and journalist, I'm all for more open government and the movement to put more government data online. But at the same time I find some of these sites, particularly from this list Data Masher, somewhat disturbing. For those unfamiliar with it, Data Masher allows you to combine two data sources with simple operators (+,-, etc.) and create maps and tables with the results. But how informative is this, really? Does dividing"Violent Crime rate per 100k pop" with the "percent of households with firearms" result in any sort of useful statistic? No, since violent crimes covers a broad swath of criminal activity, including rape and aggrevated assault, which may or may not involve a gun. I would argue presenting this manner of dis-information as having any kind of factual validity is just irresponsible. It also seriously irks me that most, if not all, of the data provided lacks any kind of study details, even basics such as margin of error or sample size. Unless I'm seriously missing something, there is no way to measure the accuracy or validity of these statistics other than to say "Oh, well that data's from the CDC so it must be accurate." After all, the government IS always right. Not good enough.

jberryman 17y ago

thisweknow.org is fairly cool

jrwoodruff 17y ago
Yea, actually. it has potential. I'd like to see richer linking, i.e. give me the material safety data sheet and a laymans definition of toluene when I click on it, rather than the current 'chemical.' But that may be in the pipeline. Overall, though, it's facts nicely reorganized in a sensible and informative manner. That's moving in the right direction.
- btucker 17y ago
  Thanks! (I'm one of the programmers) Yeah, that kind of stuff definitely is in the pipeline, as is just adding lots more data. We felt from the beginning that is was the linking between the datasets that was most interesting. Unfortunately, we found this much more challenging once we started trying to do it since there is surprisingly little standardization in how different agencies report things. Longer-term we're hoping to try to crowd source this kind of thing. So say you found the material safety data for toluene, you could link that up. Anyway, thanks for checking it out!