Here are the slides for Week 1, class of 10 September.

You will need to choose a data set to work on by the 24th. Here are some of the projects and data sources we discussed in class, which might provide inspiration — but pretty much anything of public interest is fair game. Remember, there are many types of data: documents, tables of numbers, networks of relationships, images, and more.

• Guardian World Data Index, a search engine on world government data
• SEC EDGAR system, all public company filings in the US
• The Network of Global Corporate Control
• IRE/NICAR database library, classic computer-assisted reporting data sets
• US National Hydrography dataset, every body of water plus things like pollution data
• UN Development Program indices and statistics
• The US Federal Register
• Federal Election Commission campaign finance data
• USASpending.gov, all (?) government contracts
• TheyRule.net social network of corporate board membership (old, but interesting)