Research and Course Guides: Introduction to Business Analytics: Getting Started

Welcome

Use this site as a guide to finding and using datasets for BUAN 600, BUAN 620, and similar courses.

Don't hesitate to contact me to discuss your data quest. We can connect in person, via telephone, email, or Zoom online meeting.

Sample Datasets

The resources here constitute test, sample, or practice data, or representative samples of live datasets that may be used in teaching and learning statistical analysis techniques. I recommend using these when the actual topic or question of your research is secondary to learning the techniques--if that is not the case, and the substance of the data matters, see our Datasets & Statistics guide or contact our Data Services Librarian.

CORGIS
CORGIS is The Collection of Really Great, Interesting, Situated Datasets, compiled by instructors at Virginia Tech.
R Datasets
A Github repository of datasets available through R packages (the download files will work in any statistical analysis tool). You can see the number of rows, the number of columns, and also how many columns are binary, character, numeric, etc. Includes download (.csv) and documentation links.
Dataset and Story Library (DASL)
Sample datasets organized by a by a Cornell University statistics professor.
Tableau Sample Datasets
Practice data collected by Tableau.
FiveThirtyEight Our Data page
An archive of the data and code behind many of the website's articles and graphics.
FuelEconomy.gov
Download fuel economy datasets by make, model, other variables.
Kaggle Datasets
Open dataset repository.
Kickstarter Project Data
Via our ICPSR membership. Create a free personal account using your St. Thomas email to download.
Market Values of College and University Endowments
Values of endowment funds at U.S. colleges and universities, with classifications. From the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). See also their Research page for related studies.
National Database of Childcare Prices
Sponsored by the Department of Labor Women's Bureau, the site contains a worksheet of county-level childcare price data from across the U.S. dating back to 2008, along with a Technical Guide (codebook) and associated research.
Office of the State Auditor: Municipal Liquor Store Operations Data
Annual data on the financial operations of city-owned liquor stores across Minnesota; this site includes raw data files and narrative reports. Includes both quantitative and categorical variables.
Sample Sales Data
This link is simply a Google search for "sample sales data by store", which will give you a number of possibilities
Tableau Public Sample Datasets
Tableau Public is a platform for sharing data visualizations made in their desktop software. Sample data for learning. Free personal account needed. If you have the desktop version you can download the underlying datasets from the visualizations.

Company & Industry Data

Mergent Online
Mergent Online provides in-depth information on publicly traded companies, including balance sheet/income statement data, ratios, industry benchmarks, and analyst reports). If you are asked for a username/password that means we've reached our maximum number of simultaneous users (8).
Use of the Mergent data and service are intended for non-commercial academic purposes only.
S&P Global NetAdvantage
Public company, mutual fund, and ETF data plus SEC filings, analyst research reports, industry reports, and stock screening & charting tools.
RMA Statement Studies
RMA's e-Statement Studies provides Industry level financial ratio benchmarks that can be compared with company data; industries are classified by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code.
IBISWorld Industry Market Research
IBISWorld Industry Market Research Reports provide in-depth industry analysis for 700+ U.S. industries and hundreds of international industries.
MRI-Simmons Catalyst
Demographics, psychographics, product usage, spending behavior, and media habits of U.S. adult consumers, based on national consumer surveys. Use it to create your own custom reports.
MRI-Simmons Catalyst user guide
ECDB
Global e-commerce data about online stores, market segments, brand and trend reports, etc., for thousands of stores in 50 countries.
From the landing page, select University Access in the upper right. If you reach a page prompting payment, copy the page URL and send an explanation with content title to our Ask a Librarian service.
PrivCo
Financials and information for hard-to-research private companies.
Due to monthly usage quotas, we recommend creating an individual account rather than using the Direct Access option.
Create an individual PrivCo account (register using your UST email address)
PrivCo user guide

Datasets

General Social Survey (GSS)
The GSS is a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States conducted since 1972. It contains a standard 'core' of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Explore, analyze, extract, and share custom sets of data using the GSS Data Explorer.
NOTE: Users must create a free GSS account for full functionality (dataset download, etc.)
Help/guidance:
IPUMS
Provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space (including from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, see IPUMS-USA). Users can create and download a custom dataset once they have created a free IPUMS account.
Users must create a free IPUMS account for full functionality (dataset download, etc.)
SimplyAnalytics
Use SimplyAnalytics to create datasets using thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables for the U.S. Create extracts by city, county, or zip code to make a larger dataset. Create a free personal account to save your work. Limited to 5 simultaneous users.
Statista
Global statistics, reports, and insights on over 80,000 topics in areas such as business, education, finance, media, politics, society, and technology.
Cross National Time Series (CNTS) Data Archive
Annual time series data on demographic, political, legislative, economic, and social science variables from 1815 to the present for over 200 countries.
CNTSDATA.xlsx is the main dataset file. The Events Data LINKS files are separate by year. Be sure to consult the User Manual and the Codebook for data definitions and usage tips.
ICPSR
Datasets from the social and behavioral sciences and specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Register for a (free, required) Researcher Passport account using your St. Thomas email address (and independent password) to download data sets. Click on "More Info" below for guidance.
To create a Researcher Passport account:
Click the Log In button at upper right, then select the "Sign in with email" option (NOT the blue "Access through your institution" button), then "Set up a new account."

Email Account Validation:
Typically, ICPSR will automatically recognize your institution and validate your account. If you're trying to download data and receive an unexpected alert that you're not from a member institution, even though you are, your account may need to be validated. To request a validation, send an email to icpsr-help@umich.edu.

Google Dataset Search
Find datasets stored across thousands of repositories on the Web.
Data.gov Data Catalog (.csv format)
A U.S. federal government cross-agency repository of open data sets. This link is filtered to comma-separated-value (.csv) formatted data. | Filtered to Excel format (.xlsx). You can also go to the main page of the site and browse/search topically.
Kaggle Datasets
Open dataset repository.
Minitab Support: Data Set Library
Minitab provides numerous sample data sets taken from real-life scenarios across many different industries and fields of study.
Data is Plural
Weekly newsletter and a Google Sheets archive of datasets.
Our World in Data
A site designed to collect and present data on societal issues from authoritative sources in understandable terms.
Awesome Public Datasets
A topic-centric list of high-quality open datasets in public domains, maintained on GitHub.
Univ of Florida Statistics: Miscellaneous Datasets
Appears to be a cache of practice datasets linked from the home page of Professor Larry Winner of the U of FL Department of Statistics. Each contains a .dat file and a very brief plain text description file.