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Data USA

Data USA draws upon various federal data sources in order to generate visualizations about cities and occupations in the US. And it provides lots of good examples of simple, descriptive statistics and data visualizations.

This website is highly interactive and you can query information about any municipality in the US. This creates relevant, customized examples for your class. You can present examples of descriptive statistics using the town or city in which your college/university/high school is located or you could encourage students to look up their own hometowns. Data provided includes job trends, crime, health care, commuting times, car ownership rates...in short, all sorts of data.

Below I have included some screen shots for data about Erie, PA, home of Gannon University:

The background photo here is from the Presque Isle, a very popular state park in Erie, PA. And, look, medians!



You can also look up information on age spread in your city, here divided by native and foreign born. 


Here is a break down of ethnicity in Erie.



The website lists its data sources, which include O*NET. Makes sense, since they provide data illustrations for many, many occupations. Including (broadly defined) psychologist:

Regions of the US with high concentrations of psychologists

Such data takes O*NET information and spices it up a bit. Beyond a traditional statistics class, the occupation information may be useful for a Careers in Psychology class, talking to potential majors/high school students about careers in psychology.


Special thanks to Dr. Molly Metz for suggesting this resource!

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