When I was thinking of a project idea for the technical speech manual, I reviewed my previous ten CTM speeches. I selected the one on economic indicators because it involves a process seen frequently in business – data is gathered, analyzed and manipulated, and then presented as a graph. As a software engineer I do the same sort of thing with system data on servers – gather data on CPU, memory, and disk space, analyze it for spikes or trends, and then display it graphically on a regular basis. Engineers, scientists and economists analyze time series data in similar ways. My proposal is to review the process that was used to gather this data, automate it, and improve it.
Let me first review how I obtained this economic data. I retrieved it from two web sites, the federal reserve bank of St. Louis and the Office of Management and Budget. The URLs for these sites are as follows. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/ and http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hist.pdf. This part of the data gathering process involves opening a browser, bringing up the web site, clicking on a link to select the desired data, and then copying it to a destination file. My plan is to automate this process using a keyboard recording software product called Winbatch, which is available at: http://www.winbatch.com.
The next step of the process is to generate graphs. In my previous presentation I used Excel. Excel works fine, but it is relatively time consuming, so it is not the best choice if you want to keep the data up to date. I plan to use XML/SWF Charts to generate the graphs. This is a freeware software application that makes use of Flash technology to generate graphs from XML files. http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/index.php?menu=License
The data as it comes from the government sources is in an Excel table or a PDF document, but it needs to be transferred to XML files and in some cases it requires application of formulas, such as to convert raw GDP numbers into percent change GDP numbers. Visual Basic will be used for such conversions and manipulations. VB is also needed to insert the XML tags into the data files.
In order to put economic data in graphs format on the web,
we first need to collect the raw data. The links below can be used to collect data for 1996 to the present, unless otherwise indicated. A sample of what we are building is here:
http://members.cox.net/chelwig1/sample.html
http://members.cox.net/chelwig1/sample.xml
1. GDP – Gross Domestic Product
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDPC96/
2. Percent Change in GDP
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDPC96/
3. Budget deficit or surplus
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hist.pdf p. 26 1995-2007
4. Gov Spending
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hist.pdf p. 26 1995-2007, outlays
5. CPI or Inflation
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPIAUCSL/Custom?cs=Medium&crb=on&cf=pch&cosd=1996-01-01&coed=2006-12-01&seid2=+%3CEnter+Series+ID%3E&cg=Go %Change 1995-2007, view data
6. Unemployment
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UNRATE/Custom?cs=Medium&crb=on&cf=lin&cosd=1996-01-01&coed=2006-12-01&seid2=+%3CEnter+Series+ID%3E&cg=Go 1996-2007
7. Stock Market
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EDJI&a=09&b=1&c=1997&d=00&e=26&f=2007&g=m
8. Interest rates
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPF3M?&cid=22
9. Trade deficit
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BOPBCA?&cid=13
10. GDP of other countries
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:20535285~menuPK:1192694~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html 2005 numbers
11. Real interest = Interest rates per year minus inflation
The links to the completed graphs are:
Unemployment
InterestRates
GDP.html
PercentChange
Inflation
Real Interest Rates
WorldGDP
Trade Deficit
Stock Market
Government Spending
Budget Deficit or Surplus
Sample Code for Economic Data Project Sample VB Code