Tag: public data explorer

Social Studies

Google Public Data Explorer Visits NYC

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I admit to being more than a little envious of those hackers who made creative use of New York City’s publicly available databases for the BigApps 2.0 competition.

Is there a way that non-programmers can share vicariously in the fun but without taxing limited tech muscles?

Yes. You just have to speak Google.

With their Public Data Explorer and the recently released DSPL formatting language, anyone with modest configuration skills—an area I excel in—can view statistical files in Google’s remarkably well designed graphing and charting app.

After spending a little time learning DSPL straightforward syntax, I decided to explore one NYC agency’s population dataset.Continue reading

Social Studies

Boost for Gov 2.0: Google Data Explorer

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The Google Public Data Explorer is a visualization app that brings life to public policy data (or really any statistics you have) through animation.

Google picked up the software when it purchased Trendalyzer in 2007.

You may a remember a popular TED conference video, “Dr. Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes.”  Rosling was using Trendalyzer software developed by his non-profit organization, Gapminder, to dramatically display life expectancy improvements as income levels rose.

Last week, Google opened up the Public Data Explorer to accept anyone’s data— until now you could view a few sets of data from various US government agencies and the World Bank.

There’s a new data format to master as well.Continue reading