FRED is a tool I came across a few years ago while reading economics blogs. The distinctive color of a standard FRED graph (with obligatory recession shading) was something I began to associate with the econ blogger crowd. It seems this has been noticed by many, and Paul Krugman, his blog being one I first noticed FRED on, is quoted as saying "I think just about everyone doing short-order research — trying to make sense of economic issues in more or less real time — has become a FRED fanatic."
After using these tools at work and home I have come to feel the same way about the tool, even evangelizing its merits to my coworkers and friends.
FRED graphs are distinctive and immediately recognizable
In my work in data analysis at a national bank, I have come to greatly value FRED for two main reasons. FRED is a singularly well organized and populated database and it allows the immediate reference to data which is often useful in a one off fashion. Pulling this data out during a meeting has more than once garnered some recognition of my economic knowledge which might not have otherwise occurred.
The breadth of data available is somewhat astounding. International Data might usually take you all over the web and to a few commercial sites, but FRED has enough to do most high level macroeconomic survey work. I find the somewhat more obscure metrics very interesting at times, and it's fun to eyeball for trends.
It's too easy to make weird charts...
After discovering FRED's website I was ecstatic to find that an Excel Add-In had been developed. i immediately made use of the feature and made sure I spread the news around. Being able to quickly pull in common economic data while doing simple (or complex) analysis can save a lot of time. Outsourcing the data storage and update costs to FRED is wonderful. I've been able to cut down on some user table creation and maintenance I owned was a time saver.
In order to facilitate the access to my company's internal economic data hub I even created my own version of the FRED Excel Add-In, which I named ED. Using some simple VBA GUI elements (drop downs, radio buttons, many MsgBox's...) and an ODBC connection I was able to mimic the Excel Add-In functionality of FRED. Adding in some charting code I was able to mimic the distinctive graphs as well. Given that the data is proprietary, I don't see any issue in my imitation of FRED, and I view it as a labor of love in tribute to the data tool.
Tying FRED into R was an obvious result, and I've already begun to make use of this data. Being able to pull this data down into the R environment makes it even easier to manipulate the data quickly, without the worry of Excel resources (Autosave I'm looking at you!), or adding the data to a database structure. A R programming project I'll detail later exhibiting geographical plotting uses similar data, maybe I'll tie FRED in to show off the functionality.
I also happily own the FRED mobile app, which I find entirely too amusing, and has come in handy for wonky discussions, and to prove my data nerdiness to anyone in sight.
If they sold T-shirts, sign me up for two.
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