Methodology

Where the data comes from

Every figure traces to a public dataset — a government API, bulk file, or published report. We don’t produce our own estimates or surveys. The full list, with a link to each original source, is on the data sources page. If a chart here ever disagrees with its original source, the original source is right — see corrections.

How current it is

It’s not a live feed. Each source publishes on its own cadence — some weekly, most monthly, many only quarterly or annually — and we re-ingest on a matching schedule. So a figure can lag its source by the length of that cadence. You can see when each source last refreshed on the refresh status page.

Some lags are structural and unavoidable: school-finance figures run three to four years behind everywhere; federal mortality and overdose counts are provisional and revised for months; some state files arrive only once a year. When a number looks “old,” it’s almost always because that’s the most recent figure the source has published.

How we normalize it

Raw public data arrives in inconsistent shapes — spreadsheets, PDFs, APIs, each with its own units, codes, and geographies. We reshape it into clean, comparable series: standardizing dates, converting units (e.g. weekly to annual where noted), aligning to Maine’s 16 counties, and pairing state figures with a national comparison where one exists. We don’t smooth, reweight, or model the underlying numbers — only restructure them.

Counts, rates, and estimates

Where a figure is a model-based estimate rather than a direct count — for example CDC PLACES county health prevalence, or small-area Census estimates — that’s noted on the chart. Where a value is provisional (subject to revision), an average rather than a median, or a regional rather than a strictly Maine figure, that’s noted too. Rates are labeled with their denominator (per 100,000 residents, per 1,000, percent of a group).

What we won’t publish

If we can’t verify a figure against its source, or a parse doesn’t reconcile to a known total, we don’t publish it. We would rather omit a metric than show a number we can’t stand behind — so some charts you might expect are absent because the only available data was too incomplete, stale, or approximate to present honestly.

Independence

MaineStats is an independent project, not affiliated with any government agency, and carries no commentary or opinion — the data speaks. More on what it is and how to support it is on the about page.