2017.02.22 edition
Subsidized housing. Earlier this month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its “Picture of Subsidized Households” report for 2016. The dataset describes the living conditions, demographics, and finances of families receiving subsidies via the agency’s various programs — including public housing, Section 8 vouchers, and several others. The figures are provided for the entire U.S., by state, metro area, housing agency, city, county, Census tract, and even by housing development. HUD provides a data dictionary explaining each field, as well as a tool to query the data without downloading the entire dataset. [h/t Pat Smith]
Nearby stars and potential exoplanets. Last week, a team of researchers released a dataset containing “60,949 Doppler velocity measurements covering 1,624 stars taken over 20 years” from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The authors have already used the dataset to identify more than 100 exoplanets — i.e., planets outside our solar system. Now, they’re hoping that the public and other researchers will use their data to help discover even more. Previously: The NASA Exoplanet Archive (May 11, 2016). [h/t Arthur Bashlykov]
Local UV exposure. The National Cancer Institute has estimated ultraviolet radiation exposure estimates for every county in the continental United States. The estimates, based on a peer-reviewed methodology and 30 years of data from the National Solar Radiation Data Base, can also be explored using the institute’s mapping tool. Luna County, New Mexico had the highest estimated UV exposure at 5,723 Watt-hours per square meter; Clallam County, Washington, was exposed to the least estimated UV radiation, at 3,012 Wh/m². [h/t J. Albert Bowden II]
NBA refereeing. Since March 2015, the National Basketball Association has issued post-game reports reviewing referees’ calls during the final two minutes of neck-and-neck games. The NBA publishes those reports as PDFs; journalist Russell Goldenberg has been converting them to spreadsheet-friendly CSVs. Goldenberg is also analyzing and visualizing the data — updated daily — to show, for example, which players are benefitting most from incorrect and missed calls. (Answer so far: the Wizards’ Marcin Gortat and the Nets’ Brook Lopez.)
Pick a card, any card. When researchers asked 1,354 people to name or visualize a playing card, 1 in 6 of them first chose the Ace of Spades. Here’s the data, which includes each participant’s three card choices, age, and gender.