OECD will make its 2007 OECD Factbook available on Swivel
OECD and Swivel Invite Curious People to Explore, Discuss and Debate the OECD Factbook OECD profile page at Swivel Let the Feast Begin (Swivel Blog) -jajacobs
Google has acquired Gapminder's Trendalyzer software
A world in motion, The official Google Blog, March 16, 2007, by Marissa Mayer In this regard, we are excited to announce that we have acquired Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software, and we welcome the Trendalyzer team to Google. Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations. In its nimble hands, Trendalyzer views development data—such as regional income distribution or trends in global health—as literally a world of opportunity.
European Data Portal (CESSDA)
The Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) redesigned web site is now online at [http://]{.166431011-20032007}www.cessda.org. In addition to the new layout, the site has several new features including the CESSDA Data Portal which allows easy access to the catalogues of member organisations. Other pages provide a central news forum about CESSDA activities, links to official documents, contact details and other relevant information. The site’s content will continue to be developed and will include a members’ section.
Another data-sharing, advanced visualization site
IBM has announced Many Eyes, a site for sharing and commenting on visualizations. As with swivel, users can upload any data set, but the tools for visualizing and graphing the data are much richer. The visualization options include US and World maps, line graphs, stack graphs, bar charts, block histograms, bubble diagrams, scatter plots, network diagrams, pie charts, and treemaps. The site isn’t yet live, but should be very shortly.
Data Video at Gapminder
At Gapminder there is a link to a video of Hans Rosling’s TED Talk Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. The video is definitely worth watching! It is interesting technically as a demonstration of data-visualization that is way beyond what we usually see. But it is also interesting because of the content of the data and how Rosling uses data visualization to “debunk a few myths about the ‘developing’ world.
More on Open Data
Bill Hooker has written a nice article about ensuring that the data behind published scientific literature are made openly available. Where are the data? Can I have them? What can I do with them? (17 Dec, 2006). He takes a practical approach based on the perspective of a researcher. His title says it all. …an Open Data addendum must at least answer my opening questions: it must point to the online, freely accessible location of the raw, un-hamburgered data; it should make clear that yes, you can have them; and it should state clearly what you can do with them.
New Database for Business Questions
The MIT Dewey Research Advisor is a database of business and economic FAQs and answers. The focus is definitely business and economics, but for those areas it is a useful and easy to use resource for finding quick answers to common data (particularly aggregate data and time series data) and statistical reference questions. jajacobs
New Search Engine
GovMine is a new search engine that might become useful in searches for data and statistics. Features that look particularly promising: categorized grouping of search results, including a category “Statistical Data” (try this sample search). I didn’t find this category frequently, but its appearance at all is tantalizing! a search of .gov sites relevance ranking (which they make a point of being different from “popularity”) boolean search operators “disambiguation” hints An article (Convera releases beta of gov’t search engine) says that it is an “engine designed to help U.
Intute: the Best of the Web
Intute was launched on 13 July 2006 at an event held at the Wellcome Trust, London. Intute is the new face of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), and is a free national service enabling lecturers, researchers and students to discover and access quality Internet resources. Intute exists to advance education and research by promoting the most intelligent use of the Internet. Caroline Williams, Executive Director of Intute said, “the environment in which we operate is rapidly changing.
Statistical software in the news?
The Washington Post reports that the personal information recently stolen from the VA “was stored in a format that could make it difficult for thieves to use, according to an internal VA memo.” In the May 5 memo, VA privacy officer Mark Whitney wrote that the critical data “may not be easily accessible” because most of it – including names, birth dates and Social Security numbers – was stored in a specialized, standard format used for data manipulation and statistical analysis.