The world is full of data, but sometimes finding it can be difficult.
As a starting point, GW libraries has an excellent set of Research Guides that can be
helpful. Depending on your research question, searching Google can also
lead to good sources.
Here are some other resources:
Large, search-able
sites
Basically like running a Google search but only for data sets:
Websites
A collection of various websites that have lots of interesting
datasets:
Packages
Many packages contain interesting datasets. If you can find a package
with data, it will usually be nicely-formatted 😊
Here
is a table of lots of packages that contain multiple dataset. Some of my
favorites are:
In addition, some packages exclusively just contain datasets, such
as:
Government-ish
sources:
“Government-ish” because while some of these sites host government
data, the sites themselves may or may not be affiliated with a
government agency:
Energy data
Since I happen to work with energy data a lot, here’s some common
go-to sources:
- China
Energy Portal Statistics: Loads of energy statistics from
China.
- U.S. Energy Information
Administration: from Wikipedia: the “principal agency of the U.S.
Federal Statistical System responsible for collecting, analyzing, and
disseminating energy information to promote sound policymaking,
efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its
interaction with the economy and the environment. EIA programs cover
data on coal, petroleum, natural gas, electric, renewable and nuclear
energy. EIA is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.”
- Environmental
Performance Index, Yale University: Ranks 163 countries on 25
performance indicators tracked across ten policy categories covering
both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. These
indicators provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close
countries are to established environmental policy goals.