
Finalists for the Apps for America/Data.gov Contest - cjoh
http://labs-beta.sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/and-winners-are-2/
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jrwoodruff
As a techie and journalist, I'm all for more open government and the movement
to put more government data online. But at the same time I find some of these
sites, particularly from this list Data Masher, somewhat disturbing.

For those unfamiliar with it, Data Masher allows you to combine two data
sources with simple operators (+,-, etc.) and create maps and tables with the
results. But how informative is this, really? Does dividing"Violent Crime rate
per 100k pop" with the "percent of households with firearms" result in any
sort of useful statistic?

No, since violent crimes covers a broad swath of criminal activity, including
rape and aggrevated assault, which may or may not involve a gun.

I would argue presenting this manner of dis-information as having any kind of
factual validity is just irresponsible.

It also seriously irks me that most, if not all, of the data provided lacks
any kind of study details, even basics such as margin of error or sample size.
Unless I'm seriously missing something, there is no way to measure the
accuracy or validity of these statistics other than to say "Oh, well that
data's from the CDC so it must be accurate." After all, the government IS
always right.

Not good enough.

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jberryman
thisweknow.org is fairly cool

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jrwoodruff
Yea, actually. it has potential. I'd like to see richer linking, i.e. give me
the material safety data sheet and a laymans definition of toluene when I
click on it, rather than the current 'chemical.' But that may be in the
pipeline.

Overall, though, it's facts nicely reorganized in a sensible and informative
manner. That's moving in the right direction.

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btucker
Thanks! (I'm one of the programmers)

Yeah, that kind of stuff definitely is in the pipeline, as is just adding lots
more data. We felt from the beginning that is was the linking between the
datasets that was most interesting. Unfortunately, we found this much more
challenging once we started trying to do it since there is surprisingly little
standardization in how different agencies report things.

Longer-term we're hoping to try to crowd source this kind of thing. So say you
found the material safety data for toluene, you could link that up.

Anyway, thanks for checking it out!

