Census undercount of Black, brown communities could ripple through economy

Apr 6, 2022
The bureau thinks it missed 3% of African Americans, 5% of Hispanics and 6% of Alaska Natives and Native Americans living on reservations.
The undercount of communities of color can influence political redistricting and the distribution of federal dollars.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Does the torrent of government data make economists better at predictions?

Feb 23, 2022
FRED, a popular government website, started tracking 30 kinds of data in 1991. Now it tracks 800,000.
The 800,000 types of data that FRED tracks are basically irresistible to economists.
Creative/Getty Images

One of the world's largest economic databases turns 30

Nov 25, 2021
The Federal Reserve Economic Database, or FRED, has been an important resource for economists and more for decades. But what's next step for the database?
The exterior of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which houses FRED.
Courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

The “power and the curse” of high-frequency data

Sep 21, 2021
Employee timecard data can hint at what’s happening in the labor market in real time, but drawing conclusions takes nuance.
A waiter works in a nearly empty restaurant in New York. Among the businesses tracked by Homebase, which makes employee scheduling and timecard software, the number of employees working has declined over the past two months.
Spencer Platt via Getty Images

The human labor behind artificial intelligence

May 4, 2021
Behind every artificial intelligence project is lot of intensive human labor. Marketplace speaks to data labelers in central China.
Data labeling firms like this one in Henan province are the new factory floor of the digital age.
Charles Zhang/Marketplace

The proposed S&P and IHS Market merger is all about consolidating data services

Nov 30, 2020
As Wall Street trading now relies heavily on computers and AI, data used to analyze various sectors is a valuable commodity.
Trading on Wall Street these days is different from what it used to be even 15 or 20 years ago.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Venmo emoji use is changing in the coronavirus economy

Apr 21, 2020
The payment app's public transactions reveal consumer spending habits during COVID-19 restrictions.
Recent mask emoji usage has grown by 2000% compared to March 2017, according to Quartz's analysis of Venmo data.
Keystone/Getty Images

For public good, not for profit.

Why this Washington Post reporter crossed the urban-rural divide

Sep 9, 2019
Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham once called Red Lake County, Minnesota the "worst place to live in America." Now? He lives there.
Christopher Ingraham, author of the new book "If You Lived Here You'd be Home by Now" with his family.
Courtesy of Christopher Ingraham

Before facial recognition tech can be fair, it needs to be diverse

Feb 18, 2019
A new data set aims to help researchers measure diversity in faces.
Current facial recognition technology identifies white men far more accurately than it does black women.
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

An American's quest to track down his digital data... in the UK

Jan 25, 2019
One man takes on a multiyear legal battle with Cambridge Analytica.
Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images