[OpenSpending] Using SQL for Lightweight Data Analysis (of Spending)

Wed Mar 27 11:54:00 UTC 2013

Hi All,

I wanted to mention a new tutorial on the School of Data which drew
its inspiration from some OpenSpending efforts at a recent Open Data
Maker night:

<http://schoolofdata.org/2013/03/26/using-sql-for-lightweight-data-analysis/>

<quote>
This article introduces the use of SQL for lightweight data analysis
by walking through a small data investigation to answer the question:
who were the top recipients of Greater London Authority spending in
January 2013?

Along the way, it not only introduces SQL (and SQLite) but illustrates
various other skills such as locating and cleaning data and how to
load tabular data into a relational database.
</quote>

As you see the motivating question was one an OpenSpending one and the
article does get some answers (it's a City legal firm ...)

I also note that there's a repo for my ongoing work on analyzing
preparing the GLA data for OpenSpending and collaborators would be
*very* welcome:

<https://github.com/rgrp/dataset-gla> - Plan
<https://github.com/rgrp/dataset-gla#readme>

The associating (still empty but soon won't be) entry on OpenSpending:

http://openspending.org/gb-local-gla

Regards,

Rufus