Chapter 4 Finding and acquiring a dataset for your project
The UVA Libraries offer excellent data services, including resources for data discovery and access. If you haven’t settled on your own dataset to analyze for your project, you may find one by browsing their recommended top data sources and licensed data. If you need personal assistance, you are invited to contact UVA’s Data Librarian, Jenn Huck, at data@virginia.edu to schedule an appointment.
Some data sources you might check out:
- The Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive provides more than 200 years of annual data from 1815 onward for over 200 countries. It consists of 196 data variables used by academia, government, finance and media.
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. Diverse datasets on energy.
- “Awesome Public Datasets”.
- Flowing Data data sources.
- The Stanford Open Policing Project. “On a typical day in the United States, police officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops. Our team is gathering, analyzing, and releasing records from millions of traffic stops by law enforcement agencies across the country.”
- Open U.S. Federal Government Data.
- Charlottesville, Virginia open data
- New York City 311 Data.
Figure 4.1: NYC 311 calls by hour. Source: https://www.wired.com/2010/11/ff_311_new_york/
4.1 Appropriate data sets for time series analysis
Just because your data set has some dates and times in it, doesn’t mean it is appropriate for a time series analysis.
Time series methods are generally appropriate when data are measured at regular intervals, over a period fairly long period.