Portfolio piece · Competent · Lesson 40 of 99 · about 4 hours
Finding and acquiring real data
After this you can find credible public datasets, read their documentation critically and, where needed, collect data from an API.
Why it matters
Real data is what separates a portfolio from a homework set. Government open-data portals, statistics agencies and company APIs offer data that is messy in realistic ways. Read the methodology notes: how was it collected, what is missing, when did definitions change? The trap is a dataset with no documentation, which leaves you unable to defend any conclusion.
How to use this resource
The U.S. government's open-data catalogue. Search by topic and filter for datasets with documented methodology.