Datasets You've Likely Never Seen

http://blog.yhathq.com/posts/7-funny-datasets.html

by bane • 11 years ago

116 13 11 years ago

blog.yhathq.com

waterlesscloud• 11 years ago

I now have a spreadsheet of Spanish Silver Production 1720-1800 for no other reason than it was available to me.

Well, and a long lingering interest in Sid Meier's Pirates and Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.

MrZongle2• 11 years ago

Well then, here's timing for you... Jimmy Maher, who has an excellent blog that chronicles the evolution of the game industry, posted an article about Pirates! today: http://www.filfre.net/2015/07/pirates/

minimaxir• 11 years ago

Those datasets aren't very robust, though. The sample visualizations provided with them are about the extent of analysis possible.

jrapdx3• 11 years ago

That was fun. A couple of the sets were particularly interesting. No surprise that using LSD adversely affects cognitive performance, though the strength and linearity of the effect were perhaps more relentless than expected. Its a reasonable hypotheses that other drugs would produce similar outcomes, but can't say for sure until the studies are done.

Eyeballing the marijuana data reveals that except for Mississippi (and maybe Kentucky) the Pacific coast states have the lowest prices. Notably OR was even lower than WA or CA. The graphs also show west coast prices were consistently falling, whereas the other states with low cost, price was either rising or fluctuating over time. OR (where I live) has a "laid back" reputation, maybe there's a connection.

Don't know what makes cannabis less expensive out here, though I've read our state is a leading pot grower/producer. Since Oregon is about to launch legal recreational marijuana sales, prices may drop even more.

Data: entertaining, and educational too.

ObviousScience2• 11 years ago

California and Washington were long major suppliers in the top 5 producing states, with California first and Washington fifth. The data for that was 2006-2008 era, when I studied this more closely, however, I find it unlikely either of those two has significantly slipped. In addition to the raw volume that they produce, they also serve as conduits for illegal drugs moved across the border (from Mexico and Canada). Oregon also produced, but the volumes were somewhat lower.

I have a conjecture that the weed prices in those states are artificially high, because the average person in those states is buying a premium product which there simply isn't enough supply/demand for in states with a) a less direct line to the source, and first selection of choice portions and b) a culture where the dominant cash crop in the state is marijuana -- usually by a non-trivial amount -- making the whole culture of marijuana endemic to the state. Of interesting note is that in 2006-2008, Washington (while fifth overall) was the state which produced the most hydroponically grown marijuana, which fetches a considerably higher price than much of the outdoor crop.

Oregon, then, is the first state that represents "the rest of the country" once you step away from weird effects right at the source, and seems to sit in a clear trough around California and Washington. (Such patterns existed back in 2006-2008, and also happened around Kentucky, which is another major producer state.)

tl;dr: Seattle people are pot snobs as well as coffee snobs, and the WA price of pot is high for the same reason the average cup of coffee in Seattle is high -- $4 lattes instead of $1 gas station.

velavar• 11 years ago

This is the site I usually turn to, when I'm on the prowl for interesting datasets: http://rs.io/100-interesting-data-sets-for-statistics/ These datasets will make for some nice additions to this list.

IndianAstronaut• 11 years ago

One of the big walls I hit as a data analytics person is how to turn data into actionable insights. I sent over the pigeon data to a friend who does pigeon research. Hope to see if it impacts his view of the pigeon world!

roel_v3• 11 years ago

This is one of my pet topics to bore people with: how we've now passed the point where data collection, or even accessibility, (for most subjects) is the hard part. 10 years ago, for many things, there simply was no data; or if there was, you didn't know it existed, or it was very expensive. Today, the problem is that we don't know what to do with all the data. Of course loading it into R and making scatter plots is fine and dandy, and one can easily spend days on writing elaborate dataset-specific analysis reports, trying out various techniques just because you've never used them.

But turning data into insights, or even further, actionable advice - that's a whole different story; and one that many people aren't really interested in (yet?), either, both researchers and practitioners...

ObviousScience2• 11 years ago

I'm not sure I understand your last sentence; could you elaborate?

Datasets You've Likely Never Seen

Related Stories