$1.$ Was Clinton Right? $-$ Description

Read the instructions carefully. Not following instructions will result in you not earning the score you want.

Learning Outcomes

Use techniques you have learned in the class to produce a solution.

Read and process data in files.

Create data in a form that is convenient for processing by a program.

Formulate an argument and draw a conclusion of your own based on data.

Interpret data you are given so that you can answer a question.

Work with spreadsheet data in a Python program.

Structure

BLS$\_$private.csv

we provide you a copy of this file

you may download your own copy as instructed below

presidents.txt

a text file that you create

make sure you follow the guidelines given for the contents of this file

project output

this is a project, but also a final exam

YOU decide

how to interpret the data and what the means

what your conclusion is

how to formulate and present your argument that supports your conclusion

Problem

Former President Bill Clinton said in his speech to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in $2012$:

$$Since $1961,$ for $52$ years now, the Republicans have held the White House $28$ years, the Democrats $24.$ In those $52$ years, our private economy has produced $66$ million private$-$sector jobs. So what$$s the jobs score? Republicans $24$ million, Democrats $42($million$).$

In the packed convention hall, it was one of the night$$s biggest applause lines.

Did he have his facts right? Your project is to convince the grader whether Clinton was right or wrong.

We provide you a formatted copy of the file BLS$\_$private.csv which is a download from the from the Bureau of Labor Statistics $($bls$.$gov$).$ Data in the file are in thousands. Clinton probably got his data from an article on bloomberg.com that is no longer publicly available. Bloomberg$$s writer got their data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics $($bls$.$gov$)$ at the U$.$S$.$ Department of Labor$$the definitive, non$-$partisan source of jobs data. In the quote above you can see that he refers to private employment data, $$seasonally adjusted$.$ The data can be found here if you check the box $$Total Private Employment.$$ You then need to select the years starting in $1961$ up to $2012.$ The result is an MS Excel file that can be saved in comma$-$separated values format $($csv$).$ You should verify that we are providing you the correct data.

You need data on the presidents in the specified time period so that you can check Clinton$$s statement. What data do you need? Part of your task is to figure out what data you need. You will have to research the presidents to gather data and store it in a file that you create called presidents.txt$.$ Your presidents.txt file cannot have any jobs data in it$-$all jobs data must come from the BLS$\_$private.csv file. Your presidents.txt file will simply be a file of words and numbers that you can create using a simple text editor or Excel.

Your task is to analyze and synthesize the input from the BLS$\_$private.csv and your presidents.txt file to see if you can verify or discredit Clinton$$s statement.

There are a number of implicit challenges such as $$What does Clinton mean by 'produced$?$ and other ideas open for interpretation.

You may ask what output we expect from your program. That is purposefully unspecified$$you decide what is the most effective way to make your point. You need enough output to show that YOU have verified or discredited Clinton$$s assertion. Simply saying $$verified$($or not$)$ is not sufficient: justify your assertion. Simply quoting other articles will earn you $0$ points, regardless of effort. Your code, your comments, and your output need to convince the grader that YOU solved the problem with understandable code that answered the question being asked.

Logistics

This project may not be turned in late.

Files

You will write and$/$or modify several files as part of this project:

BLS$\_$private.csv contains the provided data. You may modify this file. If you ever need the original, you can find it on Canvas.

presidents.txt should contain information that your analysis can use about presidents. This file must not contain jobs data!

fact$\_$check.py will contain relevant python code. Use it to conduct analyses of the data. It may print results to the terminal or to conclusions.md$.$

conclusions.md should contain your answers $($in prose!$)$ to the questions. You may enter plain text or $($optionally$)$ use markdown formatting. You may write the contents of this file manually or programmatically.

The provided BLS csv data file is cleaned up$,$ and should be straightforward to use with any of the various python modules you might consider using.

You choose which data structures you want to use in analyzing your data$-$that is not specified for you. However, we do not expect you to use classes.

Note that two presidents did not complete their terms and that may change the numbers a bit. A correction might affect the results.

Grading

This project is partly autograded and partly manually graded.