Skip to main content

The Quality of Minnesota’s Data Reporting

By November 22, 2020Commentary

Our beloved Governor is fond of telling lies.  One of his favorites on coronavirus is that everyone thinks Minnesota’s data is so good.  Anyone who has tried to do even the most basic analysis on important aspects of the epidemic would beg to differ.  Having crawled around a few other state’s CV-19 sites, I know Minnesota is actually pretty dreadful for either completeness or transparency of data.  I mentioned North Dakota a week or so ago.  A reader in Mississippi, MT, alerted me to that state’s site, so I took a look.  This is really embarrassing for a state at the other end of the river that thinks it is so advanced and enlightened, but the Mississippi site is indeed far more informative.  I mean way better.  Take a look for yourself.   (Miss. Site)

Several of you noticed that a post that you got notice of was not available.  My technical ineptitude hit new highs today; I hit publish on that post instead of save draft.  It needs charts.  A lot of very interesting analysis will be available shortly when several posts are formatted for wordpress with charts.

Join the discussion 4 Comments

  • Douglas Kraus says:

    Pleased that it was an error and not censorship with the other post.

  • Ann in L.A. says:

    I’ve found some business sites can be better than medical ones, but they have to base their data off what the government releases. Business-focused people seem to be able to see the data in a different, and often more calm, way.

    This is my favorite. Florida Atlantic University’s School of Business. They do a really good job of disaggregating data and breaking it down by date and by age. I especially like the way they take the headline number of deaths announced in a day and graph the actual days when they occurred. Today, for example, more than half were actually from October or earlier: 61 were announced, only 24 were from November:

    https://business.fau.edu/covidtracker/data/florida-data/index.php

    Once a week the First Trust economics blog, puts together a one page summary of data, often with interesting insights.

    https://www.ftportfolios.com/retail/blogs/economics/index.aspx

  • Jim Edholm says:

    I plan to follow Ann’s lead to that Florida Atlantic University site. Sounds promising. But in the meantime, I’m a bit confused. You say, “A reader in Mississippi, MT, alerted me to that state’s site…” So is the reader in Mississippi (MS) or Montana (MT)??? Did the reader give you the link to the Miss. site or did you just look up the Miss site yourself? Wondering why a guy in Montana is so aware of the site in Miss??

  • Mike Timmer says:

    To Jim Edholm, MT is me, Mike Timmer, Minnesota resident who goes to Gulfport, Ms. each winter. I sent Kevin the Mississippi Department of Health url so that he could evaluate it for himself.

Leave a Reply to Mike TimmerCancel reply