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1. General Comments
The controllers of data have power. Often controllers want to keep the power. For example
those who analyze the data and publish first get the credit. Those that understand the patterns
in the data may profit from their knowledge as long as others are kept in the dark.
There may be many problems with data in terms of quality, documentation and formatting.
Substantial work may be required to prepare some data sets for analysis. For example there
may be categorical variables with multiple words or misspellings for the same category label.
Some students have used OpenRefine as clean up tool. (OpenRefine began as Google tool to
address variety of recurrent clean up tasks. However, I recommend starting with “nice” data
for class projects.
Some data sets my not be safe to have on your computer. I like to think that the federal
government data is relative well-structured and safe.
Federal agencies address congressional mandates. Agencies do what they are funded to do.
Politics play a big role in congressional mandates.
Federal agencies have limited resources to deal with public questions. Someone may ask if the
three occurrences of brain cancer in their community constitute a hot spot? If so, what is
causing this? Many questions arise due to misunderstanding of the data or what can be
inferred. With less data available there are the fewer questions. Once in a while a pattern is
the result of a problem that needs to be addressed.
1) Department of Education
National Assessment of Educational Progress
I have often used this web ties to obtain US state data.
http://www.bls.gov/data/
I used this site a fair amount in past. Directions I prepared for my students
no longer work, but the site still may be useful. BLS seems to have shifted
emphasis from states to metropolitan statistical areas. This may be an
indicator of the future.
4) Bureau of Census:
Census has lots of data and different path to data. Some paths may be disappointing.
Data
Economic Indicators
Info graphics
C-SPAN's America by the Numbers
5) EPA
Data Finder
6) Justice
National Archive of Crime Justice Data
National Institute of Justice: Accessing Data
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS/data-holdings