2025-06-02 17:18:29
Downloading survey microdata from public resources can be tricky. Sometimes the documentation is sparse, the tools are outdated, or the datasets are tucked away in obscure FTP subdirectories. This is annoying when you just want to work with the data.
Analyze Survey Data for Free, maintained by Anthony Damico, aims to streamline the download process via R. From a decade ago:
Governments spend billions of dollars each year surveying their populations. If you have a computer and some energy, you should be able to unlock it for free, with transparent, open-source software, using reproducible techniques. We’re in a golden era of public government data, but almost nobody knows how to mine it with technology designed for this millennium. I can change that, so I’m gonna. Help. Use it.
The site received an update to make downloading easier across 49 public datasets. Given the data takedowns these days, now seems like a good time to make quick use of the resource.
Tags: Anthony Damico, public, R, surveys
2025-06-02 15:02:22
Roger Peng and Hilary Parker started the statistics and data science podcast Not So Standard Deviations almost a decade ago. It was one of the few podcasts I kept up with while I drove my kids to school. They posted their last episode last month.
Pouring one out for NSSD.
Tags: Hilary Parker, podcast, Roger Peng
2025-05-30 18:03:10
As we enter a time when people question the usefulness of vaccines, even though there are clear benefits, Neil Halloran revisits a time when vaccines did not exist. With a mix of charts, information graphics, and photographs, Halloran tells the story of the smallpox vaccine. High mortality rate and hundreds of millions dead transformed to zero.
2025-05-30 00:15:24
The Congressional Budget Office published a report estimating effects on household income if the GOP’s budget reconciliation bill pushes through. The poor and middle class will effectively net less in income and the upper class, especially the top 0.1%, will net more. G. Elliott Morris describes it as paying more for less, which is a raw deal.
In other words, by decreasing the amount of tax revenue it gathers from the ultra-rich, decreasing the transfers it makes to the poor, and increasing its overall spending, Republicans are asking middle-income and poor families to shoulder a much larger share of the federal deficit — all while they get less from the government. They are asking you, in summary, to pay more for less.
The chart above is from CBO. It compares income for the lowest decile against the highest as a percentage. Check out Morris’s chart that shows the shift in dollars. The bars grow much taller on the high end with an absolute scale.
Tags: bill, Congressional Budget Office, G. Elliott Morris, government, scale, taxes
2025-05-29 23:08:23
Welcome to the Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members on the finer details of data analysis and design. I’m Nathan Yau. Every month, I collect visualization tools and resources to help you get more out of your data. This is the good stuff for May 2025.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
2025-05-28 18:09:34
As the administration tries to block international students from attending Harvard University, NYT’s the Upshot charted the schools with the highest percentage of international students.
I don’t know anything about Illinois Tech, but whoa, over half of undergraduates and graduate students are from outside the U.S.
Tags: education, international, Upshot
