Seven Datasets for Business that are FREE

The amount of information available online is mind boggling and finding free data for a business project can be a harrowing process when using nothing more than general search tools. Fortunately, a wealth of free datasets is available for both business and personal use that make getting valid information a relatively easy proposition. Following is an overview of seven different free datasets that are sure to come in handy for just about any business project.

Google Public Data Explorer

The datasets available from Google Public Data Explorer can provide business students an incredible variety of information delivered in the form of line and bar charts, scatter graphs, and maps. This form of presentation makes it easy for even novices to put together a view of a particular topic without in-depth statistical analysis. The charts and graphs are fully customizable based upon criteria chosen by the user from a clickable list.

The datasets currently available include economic data for the United States and Europe, U.S. retail sales, and broad data sets that provide a worldwide view of economic, environmental and social indicators.

While the raw data is not available for direct download, in many cases there are links to the website of the data provider where the data may be available for free download. A final caveat to keep in mind is that the last updated date for a particular dataset is not the date the data was actually collected or published, rather it is the date it was uploaded into the Google Public Data Explorer.

New York Stock Exchange

Infochimps has both free and for-sale datasets available; and they say that any dataset in the world can be found at infochimps.com. The organization’s stated goal is to be the central repository for the world’s data, ending the headaches of searching for datasets using general search techniques.

The New York Stock Exchange’s daily data since 1970 is among the free products available at infochimps.com. The data includes the daily open, close, high and low volume on the NYSE, as well as stock dividends. The data fields available include date, stock symbol, stock open and close prices, highs, lows, volume, and adjusted closing price.

U.S. Census Data

The U.S. Census Bureau makes its decennial data collection available on its website for free. At the present time, data from both the 1990 and 2000 census are available and 2010 data is expected to start being published in February 2011, with additional data being added through 2013. Demographic profile data that is helpful in business planning is slated to be published in May 2011.

The U.S. census dataset includes age, sex, race, Hispanic or Latino origin, type of household, family types, relationships, household size, general housing characteristics, housing units from both a rural and urban perspective, occupancy status, and tenure. There are datasets that provide a general overview as well as sets that give extremely specific information.

Census data is available via the American Fact Finder and can be downloaded in the form of detailed tables, quick tables, demographic profiles, geographic comparison tables, reference maps, and thematic maps. In addition to the sheer amount of data available, American Fact Finder provides users with tutorials, a help tool, and a glossary of terms.

UK Government Data

The United Kingdom is making government data freely available online with the goal of making data easy to find, license and re-use. The website that hosts these datasets features a search engine that offers a variety of ways to find the specific data needed. Users may browse a list of all of the datasets currently available, or searches may be done by individual UK nation. The search engine also allows for search by a category, keyword, department or agency. Once a dataset has been identified to explore, guidance is available on how to access the data.

Some examples of the type of datasets available through data.gov.uk include public spending, economic performance indicators, business start-ups and closures, taxes, government department and agency spending, international development statistics, and education to name a few.

The Gutenberg Project

While this is not a dataset in the statistical sense, the Gutenberg Project's objective is to make books, information and other materials available to the general public in formats that are easily read, searched and used. The project has three sections – the first two sections include both heavy and light literature that are no longer protected by copyright. The selections range from Alice in Wonderland to Paradise Lost.

The third section is more relevant for use in business because it includes a vast array of non fiction and references including almanacs, Roget’s Thesaurus, dictionaries, encyclopedias, full texts of famous speeches, and so on. While there is a wealth of information freely available from The Gutenberg Project, it’s important to note that the site hasn’t been updated since the middle of 2006.

Freebase Data Dump

The name of this dataset says it all. An open database that contains worldwide information, Freebase covers millions of subjects. The datasets at Freebase are drawn from open datasets such as the SEC archives and Wikipedia. The data is either dumped to the database in bulk or it is added by contributors that belong to the Freebase community. The quality of the data is dependent upon community collaboration, much like Wikipedia.

Some of the categories of datasets available from Freebase include global business and financial information, currency, advertising slogans, competitive information for a number of consumer and business to business products and services, venture capital resources, and a host of other information.

Elastic Web’s Public Datasets

Elastic Web Mining, developed by Bixo Labs, provides web mining solutions and the list of free public datasets are a result of this core competency. The site contains a list of links where public datasets can be found including a list of dataset bookmarks with links to information such as a zip code latitude and longitude database, datasets for developer communities, NYC demographic data, historical financial datasets, real estate information including pricing, to name just a few. Where datasets may be questionable, the site makes note of that as well.

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