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Written by Bandit | 03 February 2010

What started out as a technical discussion, one IT system vs another, it turned into something that caught our eye:  An interesting numerical excavation.   We leave it to you to determine the political value.

Here's our question going into this:   From a mostly IT perspective, is the current RECOVERY.GOV site/data reliable and consistent?

Yes.  It's possible to draw those conclusions from a visitor-level fly-by.

Putting aside the debate of open source versus proprietary software, recovery.gov has all the whiz bangs to navigate and "drill down" into the stimulus data.   (FYI, here's the problem with whiz bangs:  This is what's known as IT-slight-of-hand.   I swear sometimes I think JAVA was created to take our eye off the ball.   All that mouse-over Web 2.0 cool stuff distracts us from the meat that should be on the bone.)

Step 1 - Get Data

Our first step was to get the raw data, and bless their hearts, it was there.  Located in the FAQ section is the ability to download the entire stimulus data set from February 09 through December 09 into an excel spreadsheet.  First blush reveals 258,273 rows of data that has allocated $285,475,811,090.93 of stimulus monies and some data validity issues.

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Written by Bandit | 31 January 2010

If you are in any way connected with playing football, you should know about GridIronSource.com and get to know Aaron Kyle, the football yoda turned software developer that knows pretty much everything about the game.    He's been a player, a coach and knows plenty about multi-media/Web 2.0 presentations.

Aaron, a Detroit native, played defensive back for Wyoming who was later snapped up by the Cowboys in the first round of the NFL draft.    That year the Cowboys lost to the Steelers 21-17, but no big deal... he went on to get another Ring, this time against the Denver Broncos, where Aaron went after his time with Dallas.

Written by Bandit | 29 January 2010

As many fans and pundits cry foul and insist the NFL changes the way OT is handled, I want to step back and take a further look at the so-called coin flip bias.  This is as good a topic as any for StatBandit to put a stake in the ground and start providing in depth analysis.  In order to create useful analysis, data is king.  This exercise has already demonstrated how difficult it can be to gather the data.  Over the years, I've become adept at gathering data and inserting the data into spreadsheets for analysis and readability.  In the initial research on this topic, you can find tons of opinions and only a few in depth studies.  For a good one written 5 years ago, just google Ivars Peterson Football's Overtime Bias.  Peterson's analysis appears very formal mathematically, but provides very little insight into the world of Football strategy.

My contention is that OT rules are just fine in their current format and maybe it's the coaching that needs to change.

Written by Bandit | 22 January 2010

Here's the latest example of how the All-Star game concept has become a joke.  Look no further than the NBA where AI who couldn't cut it in Denver and Detroit has returned to Philadelphia.  He's a shell of his former self playing on a bad team, yet he has pulled down a starter's role in the upcoming All-Star game.