Thursday, July 19, 2012

What happened to frozen corn prices in 1995?

I have been playing around with the new version of Mathematica, and you can access all kinds of data through the WolframAlpha command.  I simply typed "=corn prices" and a graph popped up, and by clicking on the graph you are able to grab the underlying data (they give you the commands if you click on the series),

I grabbed the frozen corn series, and plotted it.  What happened in 1995?

Nothing showed up on Google, so I think it may be a break in the data series.  This reminds us of an important lesson:  always ask where the data come from, how it was collected, and exactly what it shows 

1 comment:

  1. Midwestern drought, rising foreign demand for US grains drove up corn prices in 1995-96; Reference:http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1998/08/art1full.pdf

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