Government Information & Data

This research guide is intended to help you find government information, datasets, and statistics for use in your research and projects.

Are you looking for material useful for faculty and students in the Departments of Mathematics or Statistics? Try the Mathematics research guide instead.

While the terms ‘data’ and ‘statistics’ are often used interchangeably, in scholarly research there is an important distinction between them.  

Data are individual pieces of factual information recorded and used for the purpose of analysis. It is the raw information from which statistics are created. Statistics are the results of data analysis - its interpretation and presentation. In other words some computation has taken place that provides some understanding of what the data means. Statistics are often (though they don’t have to be) presented in the form of a table, chart, or graph.