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US Federal Budget

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:

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

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!