friggeri.net
Data
political voting visualization
SHOW HN2012
95points
39comments
#230of 1,677 in 2012
Top 14%of 2012 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
5 positive, 9 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 1 critical, out of 18 comments about the project. Thread score +0.22.
Design: 3 for, 1 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 againstIdea: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Visualization looks nice and well done
From 3 comments
It does look nice... and it does raise interesting questions. I'm particularly intrigued as to John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman's presences in that anomalous 108th…
EvilTerran on HNBest use of SVG I have seen yet!
LyleK on HNLooks really great and seems like a useful tool. My only real complaint, is that I use a high sensitivity on my mouse and I found it difficult to highlight a line. If you could…
pacmon on HN
Useful tool
From 1 comment
Looks really great and seems like a useful tool. My only real complaint, is that I use a high sensitivity on my mouse and I found it difficult to highlight a line. If you could…
pacmon on HN
Objections
Left-right placement of parties is reversed
From 1 comment
It's very good, but suffers from one basic presentational error: You've placed Republicans on the left and Democrats on the right. While I know your algorithm doesn't attempt to…
anigbrowl on HN
Groups are hard to select with a high-sensitivity mouse and lines are thin
From 1 comment
Looks really great and seems like a useful tool. My only real complaint, is that I use a high sensitivity on my mouse and I found it difficult to highlight a line. If you could…
pacmon on HN
Background bars too light and branching lines unclear
From 1 comment
For what it's worth, I thought the gray background bars were far too light - it took me a while to find them. I also couldn't intuit what the branching lines were all about.…
sesqu on HN
Requests
Explain the algorithm and how agreement groups are defined
From 3 comments
It does look nice... and it does raise interesting questions. I'm particularly intrigued as to John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman's presences in that anomalous 108th…
EvilTerran on HNHere's a screenshot from my Chrome 18 on Linux: http://i.imgur.com/vPwl8.png The visualization is quite nice, and it would be useful to link to or include some kind of short…
sesqu on HNGood stuff. Can you talk more about the algorithm? Can you use this to detect issue clusters rather than voting clusters? I have tried to build subgroup-in-graph detectors with…
joshu on HN
Apply the method per issue rather than per vote
From 3 comments
Good stuff. Can you talk more about the algorithm? Can you use this to detect issue clusters rather than voting clusters? I have tried to build subgroup-in-graph detectors with…
joshu on HNGreat stuff. Thanks for sharing. It'd be great to apply your algorithm per issue. During Camp Wellstone training (grassroots political organizing), they taught us a tool called a…
specialist on HNYou have a bipartite graph of bills and representatives. You use co-voting for the similarity metric to cluster representatives. Flip that around and cluster the bills using…
joshu on HN
Account for reelection cycles and party control
From 1 comment
Which sets of Senators were facing election that year? As a rule, only approximately a third. It would be nice to see if they were correlated to the group "switching" sides.…
msg on HN
Questions
Why Democrats appear in the Republican group in the 108th Congress
From 2 comments
> One unexplicable point remains in the data and that is the presence of 18 Democrats in the Republican group of the 108th Congress. Dude, check the dates. Two words: Iraq…
toyg on HNIt does look nice... and it does raise interesting questions. I'm particularly intrigued as to John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman's presences in that anomalous 108th…
EvilTerran on HN
How agreement groups are defined
From 1 comment
It does look nice... and it does raise interesting questions. I'm particularly intrigued as to John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman's presences in that anomalous 108th…
EvilTerran on HN
Alternatives named
Sankey diagrams and Minard's Napoleon map
From 1 comment
I was not aware of this xkcd comic, funny how things seem to pop out. My inspiration was more in the line of Sankey diagrams. Among others, the famous map of Napoleon's invasion…
friggeri on HN
XKCD comic 657
From 1 comment
It does look nice... and it does raise interesting questions. I'm particularly intrigued as to John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman's presences in that anomalous 108th…
EvilTerran on HN
Simon Jackman ideal point estimates
From 1 comment
Simon Jackman calculates ideal point estimates based on non-unanimous roll calls: http://jackman.stanford.edu/ideal/currentSenate/x1.pdf I think his R source is available too.
caf on HN
Principal component analysis of Senate voting
From 1 comment
Would be interesting to see PCA and CA* applied to the same data. On a quick google trip I found [1] Principal Component Analysis of Senate Voting Patterns…
drx on HN