Infotecă

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

In the last election the Free Democrats argued that the "Infoteca" project would be of marginal value since whatever numbers it came up with would be (a) essentially irrelevant to the real health of Talossa, and (b) too easy to "cheat" with for political benefit. And the TNC have just proven we were right about the second part, at least, to wit:

Under the Talossan National Congress, when your government tells you that immigration has positively erupted, you don't need to wonder if that's true, or spend an hour doing research to try to figure it out.  You can just look at the public data and see the good news!

Note that these are Immigration Applications, not actual new citizens. As the Free Democrats pointed out in a Terpelaziun. It's just too easy to speak miéida da toro.

Nonetheless, please answer the poll!

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Note that these are Immigration Applications, not actual new citizens. As the Free Democrats pointed out in a Terpelaziun. It's just too easy to speak miéida da toro.

Infotecă doesn't just have one graph or set of numbers, don't worry!  There's a matching visualization for "actual new citizens," too!

And the data on this one actually goes further back, all the way to the start of 2019.

Hey, would you look at that... the immigration rate for the past six months is tied for the highest rate in history, and that's from a standing start with a dead website for two weeks before we cleaned it all up!

So don't worry... there's way more than just one set of numbers.  And I would be profoundly delighted to discuss any or all of them!  Maybe we should even compare data from different time periods.

Don't trust any politician who tries to tell you that any one number is the whole picture. But also don't trust any politician who tries to tell you that you'll see better when you're blind to all of them!

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

For a while I had both sets of immigration numbers on the same chart, but I changed it to two charts because the scale was so different that it was hard to read naturalizations. Especially since throughout this very long stretch of time there were almost zero immigrants. A really really long time actually. One immigrant during all of 2021!

[Ian Plätschisch]

Auto-generated trendlines with no context are my least favorite part of data viz

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Auto-generated trendlines with no context are my least favorite part of data viz

There was a lot of concern that maintaining this data would be really time-consuming or difficult. When we set this up, we were very sensitive to that and deliberately designed it so that the system only takes one or two minutes to update each month. That means that the charts are generated automatically, too.

But it also means that there is a full set of spreadsheet tables filled with data, just waiting for enterprising journalists and analysts to work with. I would love to see much better visualizations than these crude ones! You are kind of a wizard that stuff, as I recall. Maybe you want to take a crack at that sometime and relaunch your publication?

[Ian Plätschisch]

It's not so much that I think you should spend a lot of time on them, it's that low effort ones can be misleading (even if it's unintentional) and it's often better to not include them at all.

For example, I see you chose an exponential trend line for the number of applications. Do you have a justification for that, other than that it looks nice? Linear models are more parsimonious, and so are preferred in the absence of strong evidence for other models. I also know that linear trend lines  are the default in Excel, so this was a conscious choice to depict exponential growth even though you are pretty much admitting you didn't spend any time thinking about it.

Of course, the reason this is important is that anyone who looks at the chart will get an impression that immigration will probably continue to "grow exponentially" even if that's not an appropriate conclusion based on the data.

[Ian Plätschisch]

IMFAO it would be better to show a moving average here instead of a trend line but now we are really going down the rabbit hole. I would be willing to set that up if you give me the keys.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

IMFAO it would be better to show a moving average here instead of a trend line but now we are really going down the rabbit hole. I would be willing to set that up if you give me the keys.

We should definitely make that happen, since it sounds like you are going to be able to put a great spin on how we see this data. I had a really hard time setting up a moving average, since I thought I wasn't doing it right... The 3-month moving average seemed visually completely identical to a linear trend.

Actually, now that I think about it, there isn't any real reason to wait. Let's get it improved and better right now! That's the whole point of the system. @Breneir Tzaracomprada , can we appoint him as a deputy for the purposes of accessing this data and improving visualizations and the like? If that's okay with you, Ian, for to have that for the next month or two (or longer!) Or wait, maybe some other office... Let me get back to you very soon and let's figure out how to make this happen! This is exactly what I was hoping would result! Very excited that a data guru is tempted by our juicy columns of numbers.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

IMFAO it would be better to show a moving average here instead of a trend line but now we are really going down the rabbit hole. I would be willing to set that up if you give me the keys.

Actually, now that I think about it, there isn't any real reason to wait. Let's get it improved and better right now! That's the whole point of the system. @Breneir Tzaracomprada , can we appoint him as a deputy for the purposes of accessing this data and improving visualizations and the like? If that's okay with you, Ian, for to have that for the next month or two (or longer!) Or wait, maybe some other office... Let me get back to you very soon and let's figure out how to make this happen! This is exactly what I was hoping would result! Very excited that a data guru is tempted by our juicy columns of numbers.

Of course, so appointed for @Ian Plätschisch. Nice to see Infoteca is a public resource with bipartisan investment.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

IMFAO it would be better to show a moving average here instead of a trend line but now we are really going down the rabbit hole. I would be willing to set that up if you give me the keys.

Actually, now that I think about it, there isn't any real reason to wait. Let's get it improved and better right now! That's the whole point of the system. @Breneir Tzaracomprada , can we appoint him as a deputy for the purposes of accessing this data and improving visualizations and the like? If that's okay with you, Ian, for to have that for the next month or two (or longer!) Or wait, maybe some other office... Let me get back to you very soon and let's figure out how to make this happen! This is exactly what I was hoping would result! Very excited that a data guru is tempted by our juicy columns of numbers.

Of course, so appointed for @Ian Plätschisch. Nice to see Infoteca is a public resource with bipartisan investment.

Wait I got excited, he may not want to join the government itself or something. I sent him a PM. I do really want to make this happen though.

I got ahead of myself imagining like a 12 axis hyperchart.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Of course, the reason this is important is that anyone who looks at the chart will get an impression that immigration will probably continue to "grow exponentially" even if that's not an appropriate conclusion based on the data.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The TNC election mailout just proves my point about how easy it is to prevaricate with these bogus statistics. Immigration *applications* are much increased, that's true - which may or may not say something about MinSTUFF's social media outreach. But actual *immigrants* are not nearly so much - which says a lot about the attractiveness of actual Talossan life under the TNC, once people stop and have a look for five minutes.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Again, as mentioned just a few posts ago in this very thread, the immigration rate over the past 6 months is tied for the highest immigration rate in our history.

[mximo]

As a citizen for over 25 years now, I have seen Talossa grow and change from one migratory wave to another. Talossa is a community. Many people silently promote Talossa without asking for a medal or public prestige.
Some citizens will also make efforts and then have challenges or difficulties in their lives before returning. Others simply enjoy being a free citizen of Talossa. It is unhealthy to make participation statistics.

Talossa's power of attraction and influence in the global arena can be significantly enhanced by prioritizing the quality of its spokespersons. While quantity may provide a temporary boost, it is the expertise, credibility, and effective communication of our representatives that will leave a lasting impression on the world. By investing in individuals who embody the values and ideals of Talossa, we can build a stronger future for our nation.

Mximo Carbonèl

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

It is unhealthy to make participation statistics.

Yeah, there's definitely way more to our civic life then just a handful of numbers. Anyone who tries to sell you on the idea that this map is identical to the territory is trying to con you.

The way people interact with each other, the tenor of our discussions, the number of interesting things to do... These are all really important as well.