Data Sources Page

Datasets:

• Bodyfat, and example of one of the many datasets at Statlib. The file contains documentation followed by the raw data
• US News & World Report’s College / University Data
• Food Composition Dataset is provided by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). This large (125K) comma-delimited ASCII file gives detailed nutrition breakdown for 908 food items. A key to interpreting the data coding can be found in the Food Composition Documentation file.

Collection of Datasets:

• Journal of Statistics Education Data Archive – datasets contributed by statistics teachers. Raw data are given in a .dat file with explanations of the variables in an accompanying .doc file. Several of these datasets are tied to longer JSE articles discussing their use in statistics classes. For example, try televisions.dat, televisions.txt, and Rossman article for some data on life expectancy and numbers of televisions in various countires.
• Baby names (popularity by year and state), compiled by the Social Security Administration
• DASL is the Dataset and Story Library – a collection of datasets and related documentation which may be searched by data subjects or by statistical techniques
• DASL in Australian
• Statlib Dataset Archive – one of the original sources for archived data
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) education data sets
• CHANCE Project Datasets – data from recent media coverage of current events. Only a few datasets here, but many excellent references to teaching applications of statistics in the news can be found at the main CHANCE page
• Electronic Dataset Service – a collection of links to datasets organized by statistical methods
• Data – a collection of datasets from the book DATA by Andrews and Herzberg, stored at Statlib
• Handbook of Small Datasets by Hand, Lund, McConway, & Ostrowski. Raw data files are stored at UCLA, but you’ll need the book for descriptions of the data.
• The Basic Practice of Statistics – datasets from David Moore’s textbook. Available in ASCII format in the JSE Data Archive
• FEDSTATS links to Web access to data produced by the US Government agencies like:
• The Census Bureau
• Statistical Abstract of the United States – including tables ranking states for all sorts of variables
• Data ranking urban areas can be found from the County and Cite Data Book
• USDA Economics and Statistics System at Cornell University provides additional USDA data.
• Sports Data Page
• Statistical Resources on the Web – part of the on-line documents center at the University of Michigan

Search for Your Own Data:

• C-Net’s Search – lets you pick from among many of the most popular searches
• YAHOO! -- one of the original search engines
• Alta Vista – one of the most comprehensive search engines
• Google – one of the most efficient search engines
• Random Yahoo! Link – choosen from Yahoo’s extensive list of URLs. (Lets you study the web itself.)