February 2012
7 posts
9 tags
Words with Reps: Map of Vocab on the House Floor
What am I looking at? This map shows the breadth of vocabulary of each of the nation’s 435 voting Representatives. A darker green color indicates that a Rep has a larger vocabulary. There are 6 non-voting Representatives excluded from the map, though they are included in the rankings. The map is colored by each Rep’s “SQPD Ranking” (more details below), which measures a...
7 tags
100 Words Said Only Once In Congress
I’m working on an analysis of the vocabulary of members of Congress. This effort has already spun off a number of interesting byproducts, which I’ll be sharing over the next week or so. The first is what one might call a “Congresswhack”, if one were familiar with Googlewhacking (a two-word Google query that produces only one result.)
The analysis use two primary data...
6 tags
Everyone's a Critic: Unpacking Rotten Tomatoes'...
Everyone has had this experience: you’re trying to decide what movie to watch, so you see what Rotten Tomatoes has to say. What you find fairly often, however, is confusing: This Means War receives a 25% rating from critics and a 72% rating from audiences, while 8 Mile nets a 76% rating from critics and a 54% user rating. What is a moviegoer to think? That critics take themselves too...
7 tags
Super PAC Donations: Where is the Money Going?
Super PACs have been all over the news since the Citizens United decision in January of 2010. They’ve been an even hotter topic recently because of last week’s disclosure deadline and the President’s “friendlier posture” toward Super PACs that hit the newswire today. There’s plenty of analysis of the disclosure data (all donations >=$200) out there already...
6 tags
The Amazing Shrinking Student to Teacher Ratio |...
After hearing about R for years, I decided to go out and give it a try. And, with a solution in search of a problem, I set out to find some interesting data to use. After spending a few minutes on data.gov, I ended up on the National Center for Education Statistics website, and chose the following dataset: “Public and private elementary and secondary teachers, enrollment, and pupil/teacher...
6 tags
Super Bowl Prediction Roundup
Update: Justin Verlander got the score of the Super Bowl exactly right.
Seems like everyone’s willing to make a Super Bowl prediction. In fact, even a camel, gorilla, rhinoceros, and ostrich are getting in on the action. After spending a few minutes browsing Google News, I was able to put together a list of 120 different predictions that includes celebrities, pundits, and high school...
8 tags
Is the Super Bowl Less Exciting than the Regular...
Short answer to a long title: yes! The Super Bowl is, on average, less exciting than a regular season game, although that partially depends on how you define “interesting” or “exciting.”
By my count, Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI will be the 10,413th NFL game played in the Super Bowl era, which started in 1967. Actually, it’s not by my count — it’s...