US Census Bureau's DataWeb

December 26, 2007 7:03 AM

TheDataWeb - a network of online data libraries on topics including census data, economic data, health data, income and unemployment data, population data, labor data, cancer data, crime and transportation data, family dynamics, vital statistics data
posted by Gyan (10 comments total)

I always run across this page when doing searches in various us government engines. I never have quite figured out how to use this thing. But perhaps that's because I didn't/don't want to download something to access the data. I mean koto and poto look cute and all, but something about that page has always turned me off in the past.
posted by cashman at 7:48 AM on December 26, 2007

I agree with cashman--I've hit this wall many times and never made it past. This post could be really awesome with some more links/info, though that would partly depend on the underlying sources being available online.
posted by DU at 7:53 AM on December 26, 2007

Me too - anyone actually use this?
posted by shothotbot at 8:01 AM on December 26, 2007

The Java applet works -- if you're on Safari, click the Netscape option -- but the UI is about what you'd expect from a website that assumes your only browser options are IE and Netscape 4.

This is in desperate need of a Web 2.0 makeover.
posted by ardgedee at 8:34 AM on December 26, 2007

I can't get the java applet to work. This is one of the most poorly designed websites I've ever seen.
posted by null terminated at 9:05 AM on December 26, 2007

I like the ferret wearing the Sherlock Holmes hat.
posted by Mr_Zero at 10:42 AM on December 26, 2007

I'm just not going to download any damn shit unless there is a reason to. You might want to go into specific advantages there Gyan
posted by Sparx at 12:58 PM on December 26, 2007

I would imagine that the advantage is that you can use these datasets to run your own statistical analyses so that you could look for correlations that aren't immediately obvious/ already analyzed?
posted by Maias at 3:08 PM on December 26, 2007

site needs to learn from gapminder.org
posted by eustatic at 3:26 PM on December 26, 2007

You're telling me a stinky, crotchety ferret is going to get me data? No way, sir, no way.
posted by cavalier at 10:08 AM on December 27, 2007