Comments on: BLS Data in Excel Format

By: viagra

viagra — Thu, 17 May 2012 07:06:00 +0000

An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!

By: BLS Data to Excel Format & Source Code « Political Math

BLS Data to Excel Format & Source Code « Political Math — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:47:51 +0000

[...] month, I published BLS Data in Excel format. This can be helpful for anyone who ever wants to really dig into the data but doesn't have the [...]

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:13:37 +0000

I LOVE your work and projects. Any time I get an opportunity, I recommend others to your blog. I love the fact that you are a purist in regard to the facts.

Long, long ago, I heard a couple explanations of statistics that your work reminds me of (because you get to the root of the statistics, that is). It had to do with how statistics can deceive. For instance, it is a popular saying to state that 50% of American marriages fail. One can reach this statistic with 3 good marriages and 1 4x serial divorce-er. So, 3 out of 4 people don’t divorce, but one takes care of skewing the statistics.

The other instance had to do with one year that Sweden’s unemployment rate sky-rocketed to double in one year. I can’t remember the exact numbers or the year, but it was something absurdly low, like 2 people and went up 50%, to 3.

Since hearing these, it has always made me suspicious of statistics. That’s why I like your work!

By: Randy

Randy — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:09:55 +0000

Nice work! In case anybody is interested, I have taken your spreadsheets and migrated a normalized version of the data into an MS-Access database. The zip file is 227 KB, in case anybody wants it.

By: politicalmath

politicalmath — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:35:27 +0000

Dale,

Thank you!

I’ll give some thought to posting the code somewhere… the code is a freaking disaster in the sense that it’s just a slapdash hack that happens to work. It’s not the kind of clean solution I prefer to put out into the open. Initially I thought about trying to fight my way through a javascript plugin, but ultimately I ended up with a WPF solution b/c I could do that faster.

I’ll keep you updated.

By: Dale Furrow

Dale Furrow — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:14:07 +0000

Matthias: Thanks for the useful format. I chipped in and bought your book (also as a thank-you for the Texas employment story). Don’t know what you want to do w/ the code, but would ask you to consider posting on GoogleCode or Github, if you feel someone else might find it useful.