Personal Democracy Forum – Swivel Is Fun, But Is It Useful?

Swivel Is Fun, But Is It Useful?
By Joshua Levy, 12/07/2006 - 9:23am

Swivel, a web site that lets you mash up your data any which way you like, went public yesterday and it promises to be an easy way to make graphs out of almost any data set.

The home page features graphs that makes some interesting sociological claims. Today I've learned that:

Chicken and bottled water are in, red meat is out.

More wine was consumed and over the same period that violent crime went down, suggesting a correlation.

The more money people make the less they steal.

And the corresponding graphs look cool.

The ease of making these graphs suggests a democracy of data -- anyone can make these connections by uploading publicly available data sets (perhaps those provided by groups like the Sunlight Foundation).

The business model of Swivel provides for both both public, free uses and private, paid uses, and it looks like founders Dmitry Dimov and Brian Mulloy have considered a wide range of uses; Michael Arrington quotes them as describing the site as a "YouTube for data."

Keep a lookout.

Tags: charts, data, graphs, swivel

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Thanks for the post

Joshua,

Thank you for the post. Democracy of data is a great way to put it. I hope that over time Swivel could be a tool that promotes greater transparency in our society, a place where people can call to common sense and debunk nonsense with data. Hope to see you on Swivel, and would love to hear any feedback you have.

Dmitry Dimov
Product Chief & Cofounder
http://www.swivel.com

By Dmitry Dimov at Thu, 12/07/2006 - 23:10 | email this page

Of course, giving the masses

Of course, giving the masses access to data won't teach them how to do statistical inference, as the second graph demonstrates.

By dantheman at Fri, 12/08/2006 - 12:49 | email this page

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