Spring Cleaning Data: 1 of 6 – Downloading the Data & Opening Excel Files
From the post:
With spring in the air, I thought it would be fun to do a series on (spring) cleaning data. The posts will follow my efforts to to download the data, import into R, cleaned it up, merge the different files, add columns of information created, and then a master file exported. During the process I will be offering at times different ways to do things, this is an attempt to show how there is no one way of doing something, but there are several. When appropriate I will demonstrate as many as I can think of, given the data.
This series of posts will be focusing on the Discount Window of the Federal Reserve. I know I seem to be picking on the Feds, but I am genuinely interested in what they have. The fact that there is data on the discount window is, to be blunt, took legislation from congress to get. The first step in this project was to find the data. The data and additional information can be downloaded here.
I don’t have much faith in government data but if you are going to debate on the “data,” such as it is, you will need to clean it up and combine it with other data.
This is a good start in that direction for data from the Federal Reserve.
If you are interested in data from other government agencies, publishing the steps needed to clean/combine their data would move everyone forward.
A topic map of cleaning directions for government data could be a useful tool.
Not that clean data = government transparency but it might make it easier to spot the shadows.