Seems to be unfinished as in the UI.
USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
21–30 of 359 posts
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#22This would be really powerful if it provided access to the original data sources. Imagine if you could analyze the results of public policy, with clean and detailed data, independently curated, without political or bureaucratic distortions. The US has 3,000 counties and 20,000 towns and cities, each one a petri dish of experiments in governance. Imagine what we could learn! From the NYT [1]: Want to know how many pol…
If you drill down to any individual metric, e.g. http://usafacts.org/metrics/12892 it says "Sources for this data are coming soon" & "Download coming soon". Give them some time, they just launched.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#23Super slow for what should amount to HTML - why is this website so slow?
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#24503: Service Unavailable
Is CloudFlare flagging a HN stampede as a DDoS?
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#25Before anyone goes putting a ton of trust in these charts... Compare the following: http://usafacts.org/metrics/31815 vs http://usafacts.org/metrics/12966 In the second chart half a million more people decide to die every 10th year? ( imgur link to screenshots in case the links don't work: http://imgur.com/a/tY02j )
Isn't this just likely to be caused by the census data?
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#26Before anyone goes putting a ton of trust in these charts... Compare the following: http://usafacts.org/metrics/31815 vs http://usafacts.org/metrics/12966 In the second chart half a million more people decide to die every 10th year? ( imgur link to screenshots in case the links don't work: http://imgur.com/a/tY02j )
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Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#27I'm actually more suspicious of anything claiming to be "non-partisan" than something that wears its foundational beliefs on its sleeves. At least if something says "We are a Libertarian non-profit" or "We are a Socialist non-profit" or something like that, I know better what specific grain of salt to use when reading its materials.
Anything that claims to be non-profit is merely hiding the slant that its people have put on the data it is providing. The idea that anything can be presented free of the biases introduced by the people presenting it is a silly myth. Which is not to say people shouldn't make an effort to be fair and unbiased when trying to present facts, but we all have inherent biases that are basically impossible for us to remove ourselves.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#28Before anyone goes putting a ton of trust in these charts... Compare the following: http://usafacts.org/metrics/31815 vs http://usafacts.org/metrics/12966 In the second chart half a million more people decide to die every 10th year? ( imgur link to screenshots in case the links don't work: http://imgur.com/a/tY02j )
>In the second chart half a million more people decide to die every 10th year?
Or it's from another source that gives different metrics obtained every 10 years (e.g. from census) with some extrapolation?
In any case, the differences are small in this instance over the long run, it's the lack of source and other metadata that its more troubling.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#29Super slow for what should amount to HTML - why is this website so slow?
Because thousands (millions?) are stomping to it, as it was just announced and went viral?
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#30"USAFacts was inspired by a conversation Steve Ballmer had with his wife. She wanted him to get more involved in philanthropic work. He thought it made sense to first find out what government does with the money it raises."
Had anyone made the comic strip version?
Wife: it breaks my heart to hear about the many suffering Americans. We can't take our money with us when we die, let's help our fellow Americans?
Steve: that's what the government is for.
Wife: I thought you might say that so I ran the numbers.
Steve: hmm, I'm not agreeing with your interpretation. I think we're going to have to do additional modeling.
USAfacts was born.
Months later...
Wife: are we ready to really help the poor?
Steve: this data is fascinating!