• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 13, 2013

In the State of the Union address Tuesday night, U.S. President Barack Obama called for schools to increase their focus on science and technology, and said government would reward schools that try and work with private enterprise to improve curriculums.

The president also announced plans to redesign and modernize high schools to improve instruction in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. He also credited several companies like Apple and IBM, as well as technologies like 3D printing, with helping to improve the American economy.

How did the nation react to the speech? A new feature on the White House Web site let people choose a line from the president's speech, and explain why the line was important to them.

There was no lack of social tools to record sentiment. Aside from White House efforts, Bing and Fox News partnered. The platform Bing Pulse provided a sense of viewer sentiment on the critical issues the president discussed. The results split gender and political affiliation. Bing analyzed keywords in social media posts, among other things, to determine reactions on policy issues.

The White House introduced social tools for people to provide feedback. Think of the data sitting behind the thousands and thousands of tweets, along with comments on Facebook and Google+. Online social media and live streaming provided some of the most interesting feedback, with Twitter tweets spiking around comments made about initiatives that would introduce improvements for the poor and middle classes.

The statisticians will be having a field day analyzing all this data!