School lunches + colonial Boston + song contests: the versatility of Needle

Written by Chuck McCallum Monday, 22 November 2010 16:14

As Thanksgiving approaches, you're probably thinking about the history of cranberry purchasing for school lunches. Ok, perhaps not, but using Needle, it's possible to ask some interesting questions of data that might at first seem pretty dull.

The source in this case is just a single page listing the invitations for bids the USDA has put out in the past few years. You could read through it, but it's not a format that lends itself to further analysis. Bring it into Needle, though, tag the first few lines, confirm suggestions on the rest, and minutes later you can ask whether there are seasonal trends in the purchasing of fresh produce.

As another slightly more complex example, consider this view of marriage records for 18th century Boston. The originals are transcribed from paper records: one consequence is that each marriage is actually listed twice, so that it could be looked up by either partner's last name. Needle's merging interface helps you identify and consolidate each pair into a single record, and more interestingly, can identify typos in the original.

Even for modern databases and well designed websites, looking at them through Needle can bring patterns into focus. Song Fight hosts weekly song writing contests: on their site you can sort past entries by title or artist, and see the votes each entry got. In Needle you can still do that, but it's just as easy to find the all time highest vote-getters, the tied contests, and the most covered songs. Plus, all this data is live: each night Needle rechecks songfight.org for updates, and if there are any, integrates them into the existing database.

Look around, and if it seems like Needle could help you, sign up for a free trial.