OK, OK.  Maybe we've crossed over some line social acceptability, but this is neat addition to the analytic journalist's toolbox.  My friend Mike Collins tips us off to:

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/weblog/?p=236

=REPT(text,number_of_times)

Fascinating display of global statistics on site, Gapminder  The homepage currently has some dynamic displays related to
Human Development Trends: 2005.  Well worth watching, but be sure to scroll down the page to scan all the useful articles and presentations available.

Then, perhaps saving the best for last, go to the Gapminder Tool  at http://tools.google.com/gapminder.  Note that you can play with the axes to change (a) what is graphed and (b) how it is graphed (log or linear), and hit the play button on the bottom to see how the numbers changed over the past years.  [Thanks Patti Schank for this good tip.]

Google Subscribed Links makes it possible to search deep into Gapminder's moving graphs visualizing world development. Subscribe or go straight to the graph. Contact gapworld@gapminder.org with questions or suggestions for improvements.

“The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers
<http://www.slate.com/id/2144508/
>
This article serves as a valuable reminder that we should view
all statistics, no matter how frequently they are used in
public arguments, with skepticism until we know who produced
them and how they were derived.”


From:

Neat New Stuff I Found This Week

<http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html>

Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2006.

From the good folks at Internet Scout:

Kudos this morning to National Public Radio's reporting on a Duke professor who thought the numbers on Chinese engineering grads seemed a little off kilter.

Figures on Chinese Engineers Fail to Add Up
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5478159

by Adam Davidson 

Morning Edition, June 12, 2006 · A report cited in The New York Times
and quoted on the House floor claimed China graduates nine times as
many engineers as the U.S. Skeptical, a Duke professor had students
check the numbers.

A good learning opportunity in the Land of Lakes this summer….

Dear IPUMS Users,

I am pleased to announce the first annual IPUMS Summer Workshop, to be held
in Minneapolis on July 19th-21st. This training session will cover four
major databases: IPUMS-USA, IPUMS-International, IPUMS-CPS, and the North
Atlantic Population Project (NAPP).

For more information, please visit
http://www.pop.umn.edu/training/summer.shtml.

I hope to see some of you in Minneapolis this summer.

Sincerely,

Steven Ruggles
Principal Investigator
IPUMS Projects

Marylaine Block, at Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/ tips us to another good blog for analytic journalists.  Click below to see what Charles Franklin has to say about presidential polls.

Posted on Thu, Jan. 19, 2006

Feds dispute mine safety report

By SETH BORENSTEIN and LINDA J. JOHNSON


Knight Ridder Newspapers

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/13661497.htm



WASHINGTON – Federal mine safety officials on Wednesday disputed a Knight Ridder analysis showing a dramatic reduction in the dollar amount of large fines for mine safety violations during the Bush administration, saying in an Internet posting that those fines are actually up.



Mine Safety and Health Administration spokesman Dirk Fillpot said that Knight Ridder made “assumptions that were incorrect'' in its Jan. 6 analysis.  But when Knight Ridder conducted a new analysis in the manner suggested by Fillpot using MSHA's newest database, it showed the same dramatic drop.



The newest data show a 43 percent reduction in proposed median major fines from the last five years of the Clinton administration when compared with the first five years of the Bush administration. That's the same percentage reduction found in Knight Ridder's original analysis, using a smaller, online database of MSHA violations.



When asked about that drop and the analysis, Fillpot refused Wednesday to answer 11 specific questions about MSHA's fines, its analysis or the posting of its critique.  Instead Fillpot repeated a prepared statement that said “it is unfortunate that Knight Ridder's analysis of MSHA's penalties was inaccurate.''



But four statistical experts who looked at the databases and analyses said Knight Ridder's findings were accurate and that MSHA's assessment didn't contradict the newspaper's findings of smaller fines during the Bush administration.



“It's really wrong for them (MSHA) to say you're incorrect,'' said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. “There's no question that the average/median proposed penalty has gone down.”



MSHA's response “is looking at two different things and making a statement as if they are looking at the same thing,'' said Jeff Porter, a database library director for Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., an association of journalists. Porter also teaches data analysis at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.



On its Web site, MSHA said the size of the final assessments — which are lower after bargaining and appeals — are up by “nearly 38 percent.''



Knight Ridder looked only at proposed fines because some of the actual fines are determined not by MSHA, but by administrative judges when mining companies appeal those penalties. Further, Knight Ridder found that fines finally assessed and paid fines are still lower on average in the Bush administration.



Fillpot wouldn't explain how his agency came up with the 38 percent figure.



The statistical experts said they couldn't understand how MSHA figured that out. Fillpot said “that information is taken from actual MSHA enforcement records and is accurate.''  He refused to elaborate.



In an unusual posting on the Internet on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday on Monday, MSHA said, “Knight-Ridder's numbers are inaccurate, obscuring the reality that penalties issued by MSHA have gone up during this Administration — not down.''



After Knight Ridder questioned the posting, it was taken down Tuesday afternoon. It went back up Wednesday morning.  Among fines of $10,000 or more, the median penalty levied in the past five years was $27,139. During the last five years of the Clinton

administration, the comparable fine was $47,913, according to Knight Ridder's analysis of the newest data from MSHA.



That data, which included 221 large fines that weren't in the publicly available database used by Knight Ridder for its initial analysis, show that the total number of large fines increased to 527 in the Bush administration from 461 during the last five Clinton years.



Fillpot declined to say where those extra fines came from or why they weren't in the online database.|

(Johnson reports for Lexington Herald-Leader.)

Sometimes
journalists have a tendency to be too literal.  We want to ask a
question and we want the response to be a quote that is without
ambiguity.  One that's fills in some of the space between our
anecdotes.  But other times, we need tools that work like a
periscope, a device that allows us to not look at the object directly
but through a helpful lens.  Such periscopes for analyzing the
economy are indirect indicators.



Monday's
(5 Dec. 2005) NYTimes' Business Section was loaded with references to
such indicators that journos could keep in mind when looking for
devices to show and explain what's happening.  Check out “What's Ahead: Blue Skies, or More Forecasts of Them?”   Be sure to click on the link “Graphic: Indicators From Everyday Life“


Another indirector was mentined Sunday on National Public Radio in “Economic Signs Remain Strong“  There, an economist said he tracks changes in the “titanium dioxide” data, the compound is used in all white paint and reflects manufacturing production.