Asking For Help When I Needed To Better Understand The Accounting At Play

15 Aug 2015

As I was working my way through the data for the US federal budget, I noticed a special row in between the years 1976 and 1977. It simply had the entry TQ, and no other information available about what it was. 

To get an answer regarding what this entry was, I went to my Twitter followers:

Anyone familiar with federal budget - https://t.co/FvJUrSTyFB - what happened in between 1976 and 77 - there is always a TQ row ?

— Kin Lane (@kinlane) August 6, 2015

Then, because I have the most amazing Twitter followers ever, got this response from Stephen H. Holden (@SteveHHolden):

@kinlane there was a transition quarter that year as a result of congressional action through reconciliation

— Stephen H. Holden (@SteveHHolden) August 6, 2015

When doing any open data work, you can't be afraid to just ask for help when you hit a wall. I've been doing data work for 25 years, and constantly hit walls when it comes to formatting, metadata, the data itself.

The moral of this story is use your Twitter followers, use your Facebook and LinkedIn followers, and make sure and publish questions as a Github issue--then always tell the story!