Sep 09

Apps for America Winner: Mapping Gov’t Data Mashups Reveals Hidden Insights

Posted: under Uncategorized.

The “Apps for America” contest was won by this addictive little toy, called DataMasher.  It allows you to access U.S. government statistics, establish a correlation between the two, and then map out the incidence of that statistic across a map of the United States. What? You want that in English? OK. You take the number [...] [...more]

The “Apps for America” contest was won by this addictive little toy, called DataMasher. 

It allows you to access U.S. government statistics, establish a correlation between the two, and then map out the incidence of that statistic across a map of the United States.

What? You want that in English?

OK. You take the number of households with a loaded gun in them. Compare that to the number of firearms-related deaths per 100,000 residents. And then break that down on a state-by-state basis. Viz:

Yeah, I know this can create some false equivalencies; but think of how much fun it would be to compare “Percentage of supporters of Sarah Palin” to “Number of angry, overweight, underemployed, poorly educated males living in their mom’s basement.”

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