{"id":1152,"date":"2016-10-24T02:35:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T09:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2016-10-24T02:35:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T09:35:21","slug":"econdata-post-wwii-us-election-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/2016\/10\/24\/econdata-post-wwii-us-election-years\/","title":{"rendered":"EconData: Post WWII US Election Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EconData.XLS dataset<\/a> includes the unemployment and inflation rate, as well as presidential approval (sourced from Gallup Poll) and consumer confidence (sourced from University of Michigan) ratings in post WWII election years (1948-2016). \u00a0This dataset follows a sequence of time, or a \u201ctime series\u201d, so that once it was imported into Google Fusion Tables, the data was easily read, as Nathan Yau would predict, into the different \u201ccontinuous variable \u201ccharts with the x-axis labeled as \u201cyear\u201d, or post WWII years.\"econdata3\"<\/p>\n

Time series data and analysis is typically used to extract hopefully meaningful connections or correlations between variables in the ways that they pool across time. In the continuous variable chart above,\u00a0which plots presidential approval and consumer confidence ratings from 1948 to 2016, we can infer a few things fairly quickly that we may have struggled to read in the data alone: \u00a0one, that there is consistent positive correlation (points move in same direction rather than opposite) between the two polls, and two, we can much more easily identify those years when polls suggested that presidential approval and consumer confidence were at their lowest, namely, in 1952<\/a>, and in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From these visualizations, we can locate those datapoints that may offer a window into a deeper understanding of the data. In the case of the exceptionally low rates in confidence and approval of the incumbent president in years 1952 and 2008, we may want to dig for how during each of these years, the data supports or contradicts\u00a0election voter polls, upholds or opposes ideological norms of the time, and potentially what similarities or interesting contrasts there may be between the two election periods.
\n\"econdata2\"<\/p>\n

Another useful way to look at the data could be through bar or categorical charts. In the chart above, I\u2019ve filtered the categories down to unemployment and inflation, leaving the\u00a0 x-axis as \u201cyear\u201d. In this kind of chart, we get fairly clear comparative visualizations, both for when the relationship of unemployment rates to inflation rate changed dramatically, and when and for how long\u00a0the change was gradual. Such visualizations might shift our focus towards such dramatic increase or decrease\u00a0as when 1980<\/a> hits and inflation drops\u00a0heavily from\u00a0higher to lower than unemployment, and employment rises from lower to higher than inflation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The EconData.XLS dataset includes the unemployment and inflation rate, as well as presidential approval (sourced from Gallup Poll) and consumer confidence (sourced from University of Michigan) ratings in post WWII … Continue reading “EconData: Post WWII US Election Years”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}