Research Guides: Introduction to Data Visualization: Finding Data

General Purpose Data Sources

Statista
Statista is a statistics portal which provides direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets. The database features unlimited downloads, source citations and direct use or export of results in PowerPoint, Excel PDF and Graphic (PNG) formats.

Users may need to disable ad blocking software on this site if search results links don't work.
Social Explorer Social Explorer provides access to the entire US Census data from 1790 to 2010, the entire American Community Survey (ACS) from 2005 to 2011 and more data from a number of sources. Users can create maps and use data visualization tools and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Users can also graph and chart data, export, save, and print maps and reports, and create multi-map presentations with an interactive slideshow tool.
RAND California RAND California provides information, research reports and statistics on the California economy and public policy issues, as well as access to selected policy reports, statistics, and information at the national and international scale.

Google Dataset Search
Search for data sources with Google's custom dataset search.
Data.gov
A comprehensive index of datasets from the US government, including other state, local, and international agencies.
Google Public Data Viewer
Visualize, explore and share public datasets using the Google Public Data interface.
World Bank Open Data
National and international statistical datasets on development indicators across many topics and sectors.
Quandl
Quandl provides a subset of free-to-access time-series datasets in areas of finance, economics, government, demography, sociology, energy and the environment. A free account is required to explore the datasets. API access also available under the free tier.
The Guardian Data Store
Access datasets used by the UK publisher in areas of government, education, population, and culture. (scroll to mid-page to see data links)
Flowing Data Blog
Blog postings on additional data sources from across the web.
Kaggle
Kaggle is the place to do data science projects.