the fun of open access data | Fredrik deBoer

"It’s really to the credit of FiveThirtyEight that they’re making some of their data publicly available. That open access comes in part thanks to this wonderfully smart post by Brian Keegan, a postdoc from Northwestern. In it, Keegan advocates for availability of data by doing a replication of research by FiveThirtyEight’s Walt Hickey. In it, Hickey uses data concerning the Bechdel test to argue that, contrary to conventional Hollywood wisdom, movies featuring prominent women characters do not suffer at the box office. Or, as Keegan points out, he demonstrates that– but goes a little further than his data really shows ... The beauty of it is that, with access to the data set, I don’t have to take Keegan’s word for it. Here’s my own simple regression analysis, which took all of about 5 minutes to conduct. First, a one-way ANOVA to demonstrate how influential the Bechdel test is on the international gross of movies in Hickey’s data set ..."