A friend e-mailed me a link to alcohol availability data through the swivel website.

“Swivel’s mission is to liberate the world’s data and make it useful so new insights can be discovered and shared . . . We believe data is most valuable when it’s out in the open where everyone can see it, debate it, have fun, and share new insights. Swivel is applying the power of the Web to data so that life gets better.”

Although I feel like I should be doing a post on swivel and how they are creating a foundation for open-source data analysis, I’m focusing on what got me here… specifically, booze availability data.

How much booze is produced per year for the Average Joe? Not just how much, but what kind? I found the analytics on this data set, if not enlightening, entertaining.

“The USDA Economic Research Service annually calculates the amounts of several hundred food products available for human consumption in the United States. Here’s the sauce on alcoholic beverages available in the U.S. in gallons per capita (1966-2005)”

I’m not the person to make any broad conclusions from this data, but I find it fascinating that open-source data is so readily available and accessible. I haven’t had much time to explore the rest of swivel’s data sets… but that’s for another day.

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