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APDU Weekly

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Features

Thompson discusses continuing struggles of ACS
Census Bureau Director John Thompson delivered the morning keynote on the final day of last week?s C2ER Annual Conference and discussed the implications of changing the American Community Survey from mandatory to voluntary. Check out a brief video of Thompson’s remarks.

Our weekly roundup of data legislation in the news, including Census, concerns about NCES, a new big data privacy report from the FTC, and action at the state and local levels.

Online registration for APDU Annual Conference open
The 2014 APDU Annual Conference takes place in Arlington VA, September 16-17. You can register online or by fill-in PDF, as well as view a draft agenda, hotel information, and opportunities for sponsorship and exhibitors.

News

When public data gets misused
The Washington Post caused a stir this week when it published an op-ed on sexual assault that cited findings from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The op-ed, catching attention with its headline (?One way to end violence against women? Stop taking lovers and get married?), quoted a 2012 BJS study using only one variable. BJS responded by saying their study was taken out of context, since violence is associated with numerous factors. FiveThirtyEight delves into the issue.

What do public health officials want from big data?
Last week, the 2014 Health Datapalooza brought together 2000+ in Washington DC to discuss a number of issues, including data innovation and ?work-arounds? developed to get the granular, neighborhood-level data they need. Missed it? You have your choice of 4 takeaways or 10 takeaways. Either way, it?s a big challenge.

Data science has used ?rebel statistics? for long time
Many of those who call themselves statisticians just won’t admit that data science heavily relies on and uses statistical science. Writer Vincent Granville bemoans the decline of ?old-fashioned statisticians?.

Digital government: Turning rhetoric into reality
There is still plenty of room for improving governmental efforts to deliver online data services, argues the Boston Consulting Group.

Economics of the 2014 World Cup
What is the economic impact of spending billions of dollars and provide dramatic subsidies to corporations simply to host large sporting events?

Data Spotlight

100+ Interesting data sets for data science
Looking for interesting data sets? Here?s a list of more than 100, from dolphin relationships to political campaign donations to death row prisoners, from blogger Robb Seaton.

What can labor productivity tell us about the economy?
Even though the U.S. population grew by 40 million people between 1998 and 2013, the number of hours worked remained the same.

New OpenFDA provides valuable FDA public data
The Food and Drug Administration has publicly released a huge amount of data on drug side effects that it hopes will lead to new applications and research. Under its open FDA project, the agency has released more than 3 million reports on adverse drug events and medication errors recorded between 2004 and 2013.

Center for Economic Studies working papers
A series of Census working papers posted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Innovation, opportunity, and more
The World Bank Policy Research Programme has released several new working papers.

Visualization of the Week

A Decade of College Degrees

The North by Northwestern blog, the Northwestern University Institutional Research Office, prodiced this interactive visualization to track degrees awarded at NU over the past decade. A drop downbox allows you to search for multiple majors to compare them over time.

Notable Data Publications

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