Fondren Data Visualization Short Course Showcase

• Click here to learn more about "Government Data Tools".
• Fondren Library's Government Data Short Courses.
• Government data research consultancy: Anna Xiong: jax2@rice.edu, 713.348.6212. Head, Kelley Center for Government Information and Civic Engagement.

Pros:

• Free of charge, copyright free, large amount of data, large sample size, long year coverage
• Requires no or little programming knowledge and skills.
• Government agencies have been improving he organization of their datasets, accessibility, and developing data tools for exploration, analyzing, and visualization. Some are very easy and fun to use for quick extraction, visualization, some analysis, summary and report, as well as sharing.
• Located at the website of the data sources so it is easy to change to use another data sets available at the website without downloading or worrying about the storage of the data.
• Increasing number of agencies offer API to allow data users directly access the data sets through agencies' websites and analyze data without downloading it.
• A lot of ready to use visualization and statistics analysis information.

Cons:

• Not always user friendly, lack of clear instructions, unexpected tech issues, so it can be confusing, time consuming and frustating for the first time users.
• Customer service is not always helpful. It can take long time to get response. 
• Limited features: select and extract, data cleaning and preparation for advanced analysis, limited visualization and statistics analysis ability.
• Speed limit for complicated data analysis.
• Analyze a combination of data sets from different resources.