Is there a Central Clearing House for Statistics?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Is there something like a general statistics clearing house or data base?

I saw a movie once, with Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn, where he was going to modernize a place where people got data for others on anything. Kathryn was the head woman and as Spencer installed this massive computer (which probably had the capacity of today’s laptop) she would run back and forth in record stacks supplying information on almost anything called for.

Like, if I want statistics on the number of burglaries in Dipstick, Texas in September 1984, I’d contact this central statistics place and find out. Or, if I wanted to know if Susie Brukawski from high school got married, I’d be able to check at this place in the marriage records. (Ever tried to locate the Internet address of some cities bureau of records? HA! It’s a real pain.)

Perhaps a cop wanted to check on a certain type of murder, so he would contact the statistics place, run through current records of all law enforcement agencies in the US and find any murder reports similar to his. Even if a cop, upon arresting someone, could tie into the database and find out if the guy has other warrants out in other States.

Like all births and deaths would be there. All address changes, medical records, employment records, credit histories, military service records and so on. (Certain areas, of course, would be restricted.)

All of this can be found out anyhow, but it can take days, often weeks of tracking things down and contacting various places.

Is there such a place and if not, would it ever be possible to create one? Just think how simple it would be. You can’t find Joe Schmuck, old buddy from ages ago. You contact the Statistics bureau, give them all the information you have on Joe, find out he moved 6 times, married twice, as 8 kids, and currently lives in Alaska and gives you his E-mail or snail mail address.

Ladies meet Steve Cool, call the data base as things heat up and discover that he has been arrested for rape 6 times, 4 times for drug abuse, has a history of spouse abuse and is actually still married.

I mean, I get real tired of spending hours and hours on the Internet trying to locate places which then give me links to sites that might eventually point me towards the information I actually seek.

Plus, the lack of functional computer crime records among the various police forces is somewhat appalling. It’s like they hate to share information on their active cases.

2

Seems to me that a lot of this information would be in different departments.
Exactly what sort of information are YOU looking for?
Research purposes, private info?
Locally, things may vary as well. You’re only considering the US?
I know there is a central statistics bureau in the Netherlands, for example.
Now, why isn’t this in GQ? :wink:

3

No. there isn’t anyplace like that, and it’s damned annoying.

My job is in an office that serves that purpose for a university. And someone STILL has to run all over the place to get info.

Then when you get it, you can’t be sure how it was collected, their methodology, etc. Let’s say you want to compare Dipstick burglaries to burglaries in East Backporch. Wait, East Backporch is a college town–did they include campus statistics? Should they, since that’s a unique population with different crime patterns? Dipstick has an outlying township that contracts pilce services from the town of Dipstick, so their crime statistics are included, but was the per capita figure altered to reflect the township population? Did both towns include crimes by minors? Blah blah blah, ad nauseum.

4

I can think of no end to the problems of having a Central Clearing House for Statistics. Who would be responsible for errors? You can’t possibly store all statistics. Who decides what statistics enter your database? Data must be organized and cross-referenced. This can be a formidable task when the data is limited to a specific task. How would you begin to organize statistics where you have not specified the scope of the information? You will encounter conflicting data; How do you deal with this? The source of your data will sometimes hold a bias or have some interest that could affect how impartial they are. Suppose the only source for certain data on abortion safety was Planned Parenthood; would you accept their data if they were the only source? How about if the only source for abortion data was the Roman Catholic Church, what then?

No. I can’t see how such a thing could work.

5

Put http://www.fedstats.gov/ on your bookmarks. Anytime you’re looking for stats that the Federal government cranks out, it should be your first stop.

As the blurb on the intro page says:

6

Get ready to slap yourself on the forehead and say, “Duh.” How about, and I’ll bet you’ve already heard of this thing, the internet?

7

UncleBeer says:

I riposte: It’s a friggin’ nightmare to surf, requiring hours of blind leads, falling into unwanted porn, tripping over pages of websites containing even 1 word of a desired question, opening sites which have absolutely no relation to what one wished and generally finding it about as easy to use as a dictionary when one does not know the spelling or meaning of the desired word to begin with!!

Law enforcement statistics would be easy to assemble and update, then categorize as necessary, so would the statistics of birth and death of all of the US, along with credit reports. (Right now, there are what, 50 or so different places which handle your credit history – and local branches, if they screw up – will not correct it unless you pay them a fee to do so.) When you move, you file a change of address and transfer your phone. Those could be filed through the post office and phone company or even the drivers license place when (if) you correct your license. All could be linked to a general statistics clearing house.

Like, I wanted a breakdown of the US budget for 2000. I went to several websites, including a government one and after several hours of following links, cursing that our computer system just has to use different download reader systems - I don’t have adobe - getting lost in mumble jumbo, tripping over broken links, accidentally following a couple of cleverly disguised advertisement links that seemed to be data links - all I came up with is that we’re spending a whopping amount of bucks ---------- someplace.

With a clearing house, idiots like me could request the simplified data and get something like this:

Budget 2000 ----------- 50 billion

Congressional pay raises … 2 billion
Congressional perks … 2 billion
Corporate welfare …8 billion
Social Security… 50 cents
Medicare… 2 dollars
Medicaid… 2 dollars
Public Schools … 6 million
Tax cuts for those making over one
million annually … 10 billion
Aide for the poor … 25 cents

You know, a simple breakdown, so I know exactly what I’m talking about when I decide to start complaining about getting screwed. (Like the Florida school system got screwed by the Florida Lottery - once the funds rolled in, the political hands snatched away the normal preexisting ones and actually helped undermine the schools.)

That’s what a Central Information Clearing House would be good for.

We have the technology now!

8

You seem to be pretty good at doing research on the internet already.

9

  1. Click on the link that I gave you to fedstats.gov.

  2. Click on “Agencies” in the upper right.

(There are several paths that will get you to the budget. I just happened to choose that one first. I hadn’t used fedstats before; I heard about it at the American Statistical Assn. convention a few weeks ago, and had been meaning to try it out.)

  1. Click on “Office of Management and Budget” (a logical choice, if you’re looking for the budget).

  2. Click on “The Budget.”

You’re essentially there. It’ll give you some explanatory material, and you’ve got a choice between a simplified (too much so, IMO) version, and the complete 421-page full-nine-yards monstrosity, viewable on Adobe Acrobat. (Free plug-in from adobe.com; don’t muck around in Federal documents without it.)

It took me longer to type this post explaining what I did, than to actually do it.

So, given that I’d already pointed you in that direction, where did you go wrong?

10

Am I the only one who’d be concerned about privacy issues with something like this? Maybe Joe Schmuck moved to Alaska to get away from his old school buddies. Maybe I have an abusive ex-husband and I don’t want him to be able to track me down easily. I might be paranoid, but there are a lot of reasonss I’d prefer not to have all my personal information stored in one spot for easy access, thank you.

As for statistics, different people interpret the same numbers different ways. What’s “corporate welfare” for you is “economic investment for employers” to someonee else. If you make sure the raw data is raw enough to fit everyone’s needs, it’s going to be very difficult for the average person to make much sense of it. On the other hand, if you simplify complex data (like the budget) enough for the average reader to understand it, you are inevitably going to end up making some subjective interpretations that not everyone will agree with.

Besides, what would all those people with degrees in statistics do?