Tag Archives Public Data

The next time some-one, particularly a Politician, suggests climate anomalies and surface warming is not a [the] critical policy challenge of our time, ask them if they would bet their house or their life on tossing a coin 330 times and getting the same result? The average global temperature across land and oceans during August 2012 was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above…

Are we using data effectively to address inequity in our communities? Do we really know what is going on? Are we able to make confident projections? I think not. This is from a piece I wrote back in 2008 [on a website that is no longer available] and yet I feel the same question is as relevant today as it…

Real-Time Geiger Counter feeds: This map uses crowd-sourced radiation geiger counter readings from across Japan. http://japan.failedrobot.com/ There are now hundreds of radiation-related feeds from Japan on Pachube, monitoring conditions in realtime and underpinning more than half a dozen incredibly valuable applications built by people around the world. They combine 'official' data, 'unofficial' official data, and, most importantly to us, realtime…

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has put together another engaging interactive that personalises the 2006 Australian Census data for the user in an interesting and very visual way. [The 2011 Census in Australia was just completed in August ] The site is called "Spotlight" and takes some of the data from the last Census [2006] and shows just a few…

Another very nice piece of work visualising data. Visualizing.org is displaying some animated age-pyramids that tell a unique story of the challenges of growth in the coming decades.       From the site: On October 31, 2011, demographers at the United Nations reported that the earth’s population had reached 7 billion. That number marks an increase of 1 billion in…

Local Government first to 2.0. In Australia, Government 2.0 is being pursued at a national level. However, in the US, some big cities have moved first. Here is an article about New York City’s initiatives and here is another about Boston’s moves [HT: Darren Challis] Early days yet but very interesting. [Core Economics]

Gov2.0 in the Age. Joshua Gans has an opinion piece in The Age today on Government 2.0. Taskforce needs to loosen grip on hidden public data Joshua Gans, The Age, 6th July 2009 (see also WA Today)  The Government’s tight control of public information is outdated. UNLOCKING the information collection by governments — and deciding what information could be of social value —…

The Black-White Test Score Gap Down-under. Andrew Leigh observes: Discussing NT schools, the CIS’s Helen Hughes writes: This week all Australian children in school years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat numeracy and literacy tests for the second time. The tests are to give Australians an annual snapshot of basic educational progress. The first national ‘NAPLAN’ tests, held in May…

Another good one from Andrew Leigh. As we draw near to budget time, there has been plenty of talk about what “middle Australia” will get. But where exactly is the middle? To provide a more precise sense, I’ve tabulated the pre-tax annual income distributions for individuals and households, in the 2008-09 tax year. My raw data is the 2006 HILDA…

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