Michael Schwartz Library
Data = raw numbers, not processed or organized, collected by many agencies and organizations
Data set = major unit of data storage, collected and organized in a retrieval system according to criteria
Statistics = data analyzed and summarized, presented as percentage, graph, table, map, etc.
When mining online for data, consider how and why it was collected, where it comes from, and how it is presented.
Second and third parties (such as City-Data.com and Town Charts) aggregate free data online and use advertising algorithms in search engines to make their websites easily discoverable. That makes data on these sites easy to find via Google. For authoritative information in context, researchers should consult the original source.