Friday, August 01, 2014

Experiment in Information Retrieval, Moore's law and double or nothing betting.

How hard is it to get state employment data ? I want past 5 years (told goes through May). I go to www.bls.gov. What a pain. 10 minutes and raw data on my hard disk. I had to check I am doing seasonally unadjusted to seasonally unadjusted. I have a *.txt file. Now states are Texas, California, New York and Florida. All data in thousands data Texas May 2009 10,399.3 May 2014 11,562.5 difference 1,163.2 California May 2009 14,351.5 May 2014 15,487.2 difference 1,135.7 New York May 2009 8,605.2 May 2014 9,057.3 difference 452.1 Florida May 2009 7,399.3 May 2014 7,801.8 402.5 23 minutes in all data here, but I have to subtract. Twenty three Minutessss !!! is it me or is the BLS site a nightmare ? It's me it is now 25 minutes in and all I did was subtract 3 numbers from 3 numbers (I had done Texas) OK so 25 minutes to answer from what the hell is this BLS web site. I am sure it would have been quicker with FRED.

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