Further to the $787 billion stimulus package (or 78 NSF Stimulus Package, as I like to call it), my finance colleague Bryan Routledge has done a wordle of the summary of the appropriations bill. Here it is (from www.wordle.net):
There is a lot to like in that picture. Certainly “science”, “research”, “grants” and “billion” go together quite nicely.
Hmmm.. “jobs” doesn’t seem to be so pronounced. Isn’t that what it was for? You would think it would be as big as “Energy” or “facilities”.
Very nice, but why “funds” is so low??
You wrote “Certainly ‘science’, ‘research’, ‘grants’ and ‘billion’ go together quite nicely.” That is true, but an awful lot has to do with information not preserved in the wordle. For instance, the word “million” is also prominent. What if the funding level is in the billions, but the number of grants funded is in the millions? (Everybody gets a thousand dollars! Don’t spend it all in one place.) Just goes to show that the devil is in the details.