Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

usafacts.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 359 posts

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#41

Post by neap24 »

lloydde wrote: post #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: t…

I get the joke, but in all seriousness we probably need both types of people in the world. Some who take immediate action and others who prepare the way for more informed action.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#42

Post by [deleted] »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #35
taormina wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just likely to be caused by the census data?

You mean people are more likely to die in census years? I mean, it could be true, but I'm not willing to bet on it. [edit] So I went and put "why is death rate higher in census years?" into the google search bar, and the first result is "Causes of Death - Census". I didn't actually click on the link to find out, but that title certainly sounds like the census kills people. So maybe you're right. :)

[deleted]

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#43

Post by accountyaccount »

lloydde wrote: post #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: t…

Wife: These kids in rural Alabama could really use some food

Steve: Did you know school teachers are one of the largest groups of federal employees?

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#44

Post by neaden »

coldtea wrote: post #28
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #18

Before 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.

I can't access USAfacts right now but the census shouldn't matter for this if it's just crude deaths since those are reported through a different system and are a precise count. I can't think of any reason why there would be a 10 year spike in the data, it's definitely an error of some kind.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#46

Post by marcgcombi »

And of course, USAFacts' interpretation of the responsibilities of government are right out of the liberal progressive manifesto... but I think that is the way the data need to be reported, because there is no Constitutional anchor-point for 2/3rds of what the US Federal Gov't actually does.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#48

Post by bhtru »

sandworm101 wrote: post #11

There is no such thing as a politically neutral fact these days. Where leadership is based on fantastical assertions pulled from the air, the machine measuring daily rainfall is a partisan political pundit to be attacked and sidelined at will. Fact-reporting organizations are moot when those in power care only for opinion and "gut". While i support such efforts, I fear that at the current moment our problems are too…

That's the beauty of it though. These are cold hard facts and as long as the veracity of the data is held true the insight can be enormous. The recent dialogue of fake news has made the public think far more about the media and information they're consuming. With something like public records where there is a significant paper trail it'll be much harder to dispute than climate change. There's a tangibility to this versus the at times ephemeral quality of climate change. There's concrete dates printed or typed into documents versus trends and weather patterns. 538 in this past election cycle anecdotally to me received a huge boost in readership due in part from the data journalism. I do think people are inclined to be skeptical of any "fact" but with government records I believe that skepticism quietens.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#49

Post by pcl »

lloydde wrote: post #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: t…

That's not far off from the origin story described in yesterday's NYT article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/business/dealbook/steve-b...

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#50

Post by jdc0589 »

avar wrote: post #22
panarky wrote: post #17

This 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.

thats pretty important... The entire point of this thing is to be transparent.
Post reply on HN