Hedonometer.org

The Hedonometer measures the overall happiness of Tweets on Twitter.

It provides a simple, engaging example for  Intro Stats since the data is graphed over time, color-coded for the day of the week, and interactive. I think it could also be a much deeper example for a Research Methods class as the "About" section of the website reads like a journal article methods section, in so much that the Hedonometer creators describe their entire process for rating Tweets.

This is what the basic table looks like. You can drill into the data by picking a year or a day of the week to highlight. You can also use the sliding scale along the bottom to specify a time period.

The website is also kept very, very up to date, so it is also a very topical resource.

Data for white supremacy attack in VA

In the pages "About" section, they address many methodological questions your students might raise about this tool. It is a good example for the process researchers go through when making judgment calls regarding the operationalization of their variables.:

In order to determine the happiness of any given word, they had to score the words. Here are their scores, which they provide:

http://hedonometer.org/words.html

They describe how they rated the words, which gives your students an example of how to use mTurk in research:

http://hedonometer.org/about.html

 They also describe a shortcoming of the lexical ratings: Good events that are associated with very, very bad events:

http://hedonometer.org/about.html

 They also describe their exact sample:

http://hedonometer.org/about.html