Data Is Plural

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

2019.11.20 edition

Chicago prosecutions, electricity prices, financial well-being, soccer play-by-play, and Central Park squirrels.

Chicago prosecutions. Since early 2018, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has been publishing detailed data on every felony case it has handled since 2010. (The office, whose jurisdiction includes Chicago, is the second-largest local prosecutorial agency in the country.) The datasets cover four main stages: intake, initiation, charging, and sentencing. Related: In a recent Pudding article copublished with The Marshall Project and Chicago Reporter, Matt Daniels used the data to examine how prosecutions have changed under State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who promised reforms.

Electricity prices. OpenEI’s Utility Rate Database contains nearly 50,000 expert-verified rates — current and historical — for residential, commercial, industrial, and street-lighting electricity from thousands of US utility companies. Related: OpenEI’s other data offerings. [h/t Arik Levinson and Emilson Delfino Silva]

Financial well-being. Since the mid-1980s, the US Census Bureau has periodically conducted its Survey of Income and Program Participation and provided anonymized, respondent-level data. In addition to the titular topics, the extensive questionnaires also ask about “family dynamics, educational attainment, housing expenditures, asset ownership, health insurance, disability, child care, and food security.” Related: My colleagues Scott Pham and Venessa Wong used SIPP’s data on familial support to “finally end the myth of the lazy millennial.”

Soccer/football play-by-play. A group of academics has partnered with a soccer-data company to publish what they believe to be “the largest collection of soccer-logs ever released.” The dataset describes every “event” on the field — each pass, shot, foul, tackle, penalty, and more — for the 2017/18 season of five European leagues, the 2018 World Cup, and the 2016 European championship.

Central Park squirrels. Last October, the Squirrel Census dispatched 300+ volunteers to record every squirrel they saw in Central Park. In June, the organizers published a multimedia report of their findings (at $75 each). Now they’ve made the data — with each squirrel’s location, fur color, behavior, and more — available through New York City’s open data portal. Related: CityLab has more details on the project and interviews its creator. [h/t Jesus M. Castagnetto + Tidy Tuesday]