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Home > The 10 Minute Business Analytics Podcast | Data Analytics, Big Data, Data Visualization, Data Warehousing > EP10: Does Steve Ballmer's USAFacts Actually Help?
Podcast: The 10 Minute Business Analytics Podcast | Data Analytics, Big Data, Data Visualization, Data Warehousing
Episode:

EP10: Does Steve Ballmer's USAFacts Actually Help?
Category: Business
Duration: 00:09:58
Publish Date: 2017-07-31 08:00:00
Description:

When former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer rolled out his extensive government database in April, it marked the first time much of that data had been easily available to the public. And for USAFacts, the word "easy" is key. The $10 million effort attacked some 30 years of data from 70 municipal, state and federal agencies. The goal was to make the mountains of information easily accessible by the lay public.

In many respects, that's the essence of data analytics. It's about helping users spot the patterns and deviations from a massive amount of numbers. That requires understanding the user—and the questions the user is likely to want to ask—as well as the data.

Turning back to Balmer's USAFacts effort, did it in fact make those terabytes of data easily accessible to the public? Or did it needlessly limit that access to a handful of categories that its developers thought up?

To figure this out, we're turning to Dave Johansen …. VP of engineering at Numetric.
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