Data Is Plural

... is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets.

2018.08.15 edition

Corporate data: peer-to-peer loans, rocket launches, sneaker factories, retail stores, and financial statements.

Peer-to-peer loans. The Lending Club, which matches borrowers with investors, publishes a dataset of all loans issued through its platform since 2007. The dataset’s many fields include each loan’s amount, term, interest rate, grade, status, and purpose (as a category, and often also a fuller description), as well as the borrower’s employer, home ownership status, and annual income. You can also download all declined loans, i.e., those “that did not meet Lending Club’s credit underwriting policy.” [h/t Charlie Stanton]

Rocket launches. SpaceX’s API provides data on the company’s rockets, launchpads, launches, and more. It also will tell you the current orbital position of the car SpaceX launched into space. [h/t Mike Allred]

Sneaker factories. Nike, Inc.’s manufacturing map displays 618 factories and material suppliers that the company uses to manufacture its products (as of May 2018). You can export the entire dataset, or browse and filter the data online. For each of the factories, the information includes the factory’s name, address, product type, number of workers, percentage of workers who are female, and more. [h/t Marc DaCosta]

Retail stores and products. Best Buy’s API and Walmart’s API both let you search their products and stores. Both also require (free) registration to obtain an API key. In 2016, Best Buy also published bulk data describing its products and stores. [h/t Dan Nguyen + Dave Machado]

Financial statements. The SEC’s Office of Structured Disclosure publishes data extracted from corporations’ public financial statements. That dataset contains the numbers listed in each company’s primary financial statements — balance sheets, cash flows, et cetera. An even more detailed version of the dataset includes plain-text notes from the filings, plus numbers from a broader array of forms. Both datasets are updated quarterly and go back to 2009.