There are many sources for datasets and the below are just a sampling of data sets that may be found online. Most are freely available except where otherwise noted. The dataset sources on this page are intended to be of use to those students enrolled in applied statistics courses.
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts have launched a torrent site which allows academics to share papers and datasets. The Academic Torrents service is designed to facilitate storage of all the data used in research, including datasets as well as publications. One of the uses of the site (in addition to being useful for a group of editors to "seed" their own peer-reviewed published articles), is for large dataset delivery. Large dataset delivery can be supported by researchers in the field that have the dataset on their machine. A popular large dataset doesn't need to be housed centrally. Researchers can have part of the dataset they are working on and they can help host it together.
Academics can join the site and start sharing. The site currently indexes over 1.5 petabytes of data, including a recent copy of Wikipedia and NASA's map of Mars.
-posted on February 2, 2014
UCI Machine Learning Repository of Datasets
Nearly 300 datasets are maintained on the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository site. View all datasets, see newest datasets, and view most popular datasets. Datasets are organized to browse alphabetically by subject but users can sort using the faceting tools on the left sidebar by attribute type, data type, subject area, the number of attributes, the number of instances, and format types.
-posted on March 5, 2014
Many text and numeric databases are available from Federal agencies for policy analysis and general research. Data.gov is an excellent resources for connecting to datasets.
The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) provides information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and household characteristics. The survey data are collected for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau. Free resource.
Data sets on education are available freely through a number of sites. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) collects, analyzes and makes available data related to education in the U.S. and other nations and below you will find links to a few of their data sets.
