Women in the United States have the best quality of life of any developed nation, according to the Better Life Index recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The index combines eleven different measures of wellbeing, including health, education, income, and life satisfaction. Australia gets top honors for overall wellbeing, but U.S. [...]
Archive for the ‘Data’ Category
Is the United States the Best Place for Women?
Posted in Data, International, tagged Data, OECD, Quality of Life on May 23, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Is the Reliability of Public Opinion Surveys Declining?
Posted in Data, Politics, tagged Public opinion on May 20, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Public opinion surveys provide a wealth of information about beliefs in America and around the world. For example, they document how much public approval for same-sex marriage has been increasing, how Facebook has infiltrated many of our daily lives, and how humanitarian aid affects how citizens of other nations view America. But pollsters face a [...]
Energy Security, the Infographic
Posted in Data, Energy, tagged Energy, Infographic, Natural Gas, Oil on May 11, 2012 | 12 Comments »
The Congressional Budget Office is out with another fine infographic, this time on energy security. The entire infographic is too big to post here, but here’s how Andrew Stocking and Maureen Costantino portray America’s energy sources and uses: One of the most notable features is the absence of any link from natural gas to transportation [...]
Jobs Report – The Soft Side of Mediocre
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged jobs, Macroeconomics, unemployment on May 4, 2012 | 4 Comments »
As expected, today’s jobs data showed a slowing labor market. Payrolls expanded by 115,000 in April, less than hoped or expected. Upward revisions to February and March added another 53,000 jobs, however, so the overall payroll picture is better than the headline. The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.1%, the labor force participation rate slipped to 63.6%, [...]
A Sunday Numeracy Quiz
Posted in Data, Life, Teaching, tagged Ethicist, Gambling, Graphics, New York Times, Wall Street Journal on February 5, 2012 | 2 Comments »
My Sunday reading turned up three examples of glaring numeracy errors. I make plenty of my own errors, so I have sympathy for the perpetrators. But I did want to highlight them as examples of what can happen when quantitative thinking runs off the rails. And the need to remain mathematically vigilant in your daily [...]
Getting Better But a Long Way to Go
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged jobs, unemployment on January 7, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Friday’s jobs data confirmed that labor markets are getting better, but slowly. Payrolls expanded by 200,000, the unemployment rate fell again to 8.5%, weekly hours ticked up from 34.3 to 34.4, and hourly earnings rose by 0.2%. Of course, there is still a long, long way to go. Unemployment and underemployment both remain very high, but [...]
You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure Correctly, NYC Crime Edition
Posted in Data, Microeconomics, tagged Crime, Incentives, Measurement, New York City on January 2, 2012 | 2 Comments »
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. That’s good advice, as far as it goes. But it has a dark underside: managing the measurement rather than actual outcomes. Over at the New York Times, Al Baker and Joseph Goldstein recount a troubling example. To keep reported crime rates low, New York’s Finest may be under [...]
Child Mortality and Development, the Video
Posted in Data, History, International, tagged Data, Development on November 2, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Courtesy of Bill Gates, here’s Hans Rosling talking child mortality and development. (Gates emphasizes foreign aid in his description, but that seems secondary compared to development generally.) Hans Rosling Breaks Down the Impact of Foreign Aid from bgC3 on Vimeo.
Better Than Feared, But Still Mediocre
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, jobs, Macroeconomics, unemployment on August 5, 2011 | 4 Comments »
America’s job market has been down so long, today’s mediocre report looked like up. The headline figures — payrolls up 117,000, unemployment rate down a tic to 9.1% — were better than most forecasters anticipated. That’s a relief. And many details moved in the right direction as well. Revisions to May and June added another [...]
Ranking U.S. Economic Recoveries
Posted in Data, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, Graphics, Macroeconomics on July 26, 2011 | 1 Comment »
The Wall Street Journal has a lovely graphic this morning illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of U.S. economic recoveries since World War II. No surprise, the current recovery is long on weaknesses and short on strengths: The graphic is based on a very similar one the IMF included in its recent overview of the U.S. economy [...]
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