Dataset Examples and Use Cases

Abstract

To illustrate some of the practices we learned about in the preceding chapters, let’s have a brief look at the characteristics of a few example datasets. We will examine some well-known datasets that pop up regularly in data analytics courses and textbooks for teaching about visualization, regression modeling, machine learning, and other data exploration methods. There are literally thousands of online datasets hosted by independent researchers, government agencies, corporations, and academics. These online datasets vary widely in the completeness and quality of their metadata and of the data itself and are worth reviewing for their ranges of “goodness.”