In the news ...

A few items from across my feeds (and Jonathan's -- thanks!) that may be of interest:

• For those of you who think the college entrance exams don't really give an accurate indicator of performance in college, there's a story out that suggests we don't really collect enough data at the institutional level about this topic: http://chronicle.com/article/Many-Colleges-Don-t-Put/236801/
• Do you get your news online? Seems like most of us do. Pew just released a report showing the effects -- a decline for newspaper circulation. http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/
• Courtesy of Jonathan, a story about Topeka's participation in a program about using data to make city improvement decisions http://cjonline.com/news/2016-06-13/city-topeka-selected-what-works-cities-initiative-open-data

OK, who has a cat?

What could be better than cats?

Cats + Data, right?

This article shares some data on the nocturnal travels of cats, courtesy of GPS:

http://www.boredpanda.com/gps-tracker-cat-movement-map-lithgow-central-tablelands-local-land-services/

If you need a study break, you simply must check it out right meow :)

More 2015-16 school data!

Saw this article in The Democrat today:

http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2016/06/11/how-area-schools-stacked-up-state-tests/85761296/

A bunch of K-12 test scores were released on Friday. Leon County is doing well, but nonetheless some of the news is troubling:

On almost every test, Leon County students outperformed the state average. Significant jumps in how many students passed certain tests was evidenced at struggling schools in the district and in other counties.

But school-level results indicate that economically-disadvantaged and minority students did not fare as well as their peers, and not just in Leon County.

Data manipulation via graphics?

This is a political story, but I'm not sharing it to be political. The basic deal is that Trump tweeted out graphs to prove that Obama has not been an effective president. Someone at the Washington Post took a closer look at these graphs to see if they were accurate and fairly presented. Remove candidate/leader names from your mind and take a look at this story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/03/fact-checking-donald-trumps-nine-graph-tweet-proving-that-obama-has-failed/

What do you think?

Gun Violence in the US

I woke at 5 am today to a child in my bed with a (very) bloody nose. An hour later, that situation settled (bleeding stopped, shower taken to wash bloody hair, sheets changed), I climbed back in bed. Unable to easily fall back asleep, I grabbed my iPad to read. Then I saw the news alert. Instantly I knew this was one of those days when life would change again, when innocence was stolen yet again.  Another mass shooting, so senseless, and relatively close to home. These are the times we live in, and I'm not yet immune to feeling a combination of sorrow and horror each time.

I hope you and your family and friends are all safe. I've checked in with my Orlando area friends, and thankfully they are all okay. But many others are not (and if you have Type O blood you might want to help out by donating).

I'm not writing this to engage in a conversation or debate about gun rights, but needless to say this has been one of the topics blowing up my Facebook feed today. One friend shared this NPR piece from last December, which discusses the lack of a gun violence database at a time when gun violence seems to be increasing (just the stats on Chicago in a give weekend over summer are absolutely alarming):

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/09/459056018/the-u-s-has-a-mass-shooting-epidemic-but-no-federal-database-on-gun-violence

Mark Follman, a journalist featured in this NPR piece who noted the lack of a central database, set out to gather the information himself. He writes for Mother Jones and you can find some of his database work here:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

I know the date in the URL is 2012, but it's been kept up to date. A note at the top says that they're updating it with Orlando data.

Going on a data diet?

The National Science Foundation has an annual report that shares data on science and engineering. It's called Science and Engineering Indicators.

As I learned in an article in Science, the size of this report has steadily grown since its inception in 1972:

But now there's talk of slimming back down -- although not everyone thinks that's a good idea. Read more here?

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/could-shrinking-nsf-s-beloved-indicators-be-boon-researchers

What do you think? Is it a bad idea to go on a data diet?