Data Mining the US Senate Votes

Posted by michael on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:39AM from the his-record-doesn't-match-his-record dept.

AJ writes "We used some old and new data mining techniques to see what was happening in the US Senate in 2003. Among other things, we identified the 'social' network of similarities between senators, how influential is each senator and each state, and a 3D VRML view of the Senate. You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal, and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans. We provide our data and the source of all our analysis software (Orange and MPCA, both under GPL)."

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Yeah, we're not biased... by SPBesui · 2004-10-28 05:49 · Score: 0, Flamebait

However, one should interpret "Not Voting" as letting the majority vote for you. Since the majority is Republican, the fact that Kerry often did not vote means that he is effectively the most central of all Democrats, based on all the votes cast in 2003. Anyone with a brain knows this isn't true.