The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#1

Post by mci » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures
marcinciura.wordpress.com

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#2

Post by pjf » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 3:32 PM UTC

Great and novel use of PCA for politics analysis. Best regards from your former student at polsl :)

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#3

Post by xylodev » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

Nice analysis before the upcoming parliamentary elections. It is surprising that the most euro-sceptic deputy is member of the party that supports the goverment, which appears to be an EU-enthusiast. We can also observe some unusual behaviors (eg. some of the opposition members seems to be more pro-goverment), so I wonder if this analysis could be used for the prediction of deputy transfers between the parties.

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#4

Post by haddr » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

This is really enlightening example!

I would love to see some CSV dump of the scrapped data, because this work might inspire others to experiment and do interesting things as well...

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#5

Post by Osmium » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

Tangent, but I really like the animated 3D plot. If you have to use a 3D plot, it really helps. Is there an easy way to make these?

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#6

Post by olihb » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

Very cool, I did the same thing a while back for the Canadian Parliament. Unfortunately, the party discipline in Canadian politics makes it less interesting.

It has done in flash, when flash was cool... http://olihb.com/2011/02/27/legislative-explorer/

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#7

Post by pavanred » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #5

Tangent, but I really like the animated 3D plot. If you have to use a 3D plot, it really helps. Is there an easy way to make these?

rgl library for R can be used to make such plots.

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#8

Post by IshKebab » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

This is great. It shows that there is more to the politics than just left-right.

However, I do think the graphs are a bit misleading in that the x,y,z components are normalised in the figures, whereas actually y is far more significant than x or z.

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#9

Post by mci » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:10 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #5

Tangent, but I really like the animated 3D plot. If you have to use a 3D plot, it really helps. Is there an easy way to make these?

Thanks. I like it, too. The Python code to draw it is here: https://bitbucket.org/mciura/sejm/src/886fb4fceb348468a160d5...

Re: The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures

#10

Post by mci » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:19 PM UTC

xylodev wrote: post #3

Nice analysis before the upcoming parliamentary elections. It is surprising that the most euro-sceptic deputy is member of the party that supports the goverment, which appears to be an EU-enthusiast. We can also observe some unusual behaviors (eg. some of the opposition members seems to be more pro-goverment), so I wonder if this analysis could be used for the prediction of deputy transfers between the parties.

I didn't put much thought into identifying the third axis. It may well be a linear combination of Euroscepticism and something else. The artefacts you see may be due to former transfers or to MPs who voted for part of the term only.