Learning Public Data Sets

Learn how to find free, public sources of data on a variety of business, education, and health issues and download the data for your own analysis.

Discover how to find free, public sources of data on a variety of business, education, and health issues and download the data for your own analysis. Instructor Curt Frye introduces several US government resources—from the US Census Bureau to the US Patent and Trademark Office—and surveys datasets from international agencies such as the World Bank and United Nations. Plus, he goes over data search engines, web services, and even language resources like the Ngram Viewer for Google Books. Upon wrapping up this course, you'll be better equipped to find the information you need for your scholarship and data analysis efforts.

Introduction

• Use public data sets to perform analyses
• What you should know

1. US Census Bureau and Securities and Exchange Commission

• US Census Bureau population data
• US Census Bureau maps and visualizations
• US Census Bureau industry data
• US Census Bureau geographic data sets
• US health data
• EDGAR

2. Other US Government Agencies

• Bureau of Justice Statistics
• Internal Revenue Service migration data
• Bureau of Economic Analysis
• US Federal Reserve Board
• US Department of Education Data and Research
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Bureau of Transportation Statistics
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• National Centers for Environmental Information

3. Data Sources for Non-US Entities

• World Bank
• CIA World Factbook
• United Nations
• UNICEF
• Statistics Canada
• Eurostat
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
• UK National Health Service NHS Digital

4. Data Search Engines and Portals

• Google Finance
• Google Trends
• Google Public Data Explorer
• Amazon Web Services Public Data Sets
• Data.gov
• Google Ngram Viewer
• The Corpus of Contemporary American English
• University of California, Irvine, Center for Machine Learning
• Pew Research Center

Conclusion

• Next steps