Introducing Data to Students : Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) and Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)

1. Introducing Data to Students: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) and Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) FransAlbarillo Business, Sociology, and Linguistics Librarian Brooklyn College, CUNY falbarillo@brooklyn.cuny.edu

2. Outline Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) and Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) • my role in providing data services to patrons • functionality and features of web resources • implications of the federal government's Open Data Policy with these resources • Big Data and big data

3. Data Audience at Brooklyn College • Economicsand Sociology (undergraduate and graduate ) • Management and Finance (undergraduate) Note: my formal graduate training is in Linguistics

4. http://research.stlouisfed.org/

5. Definition of 'Federal Reserve Bank Of St. Louis' The Federal Reserve Bank responsible for the eighth district. It is located in St. Louis, MO. Its territory includes parts of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee, as well as the entire state of Arkansas. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis maintains a database called Federal Reserve Economic Data http://research.stlouisfed.org/ Source: “Federal Reserve Bank Of St. Louis Definition | Investopedia.” 2013. Accessed October 22. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/federal-reserve-bank-of-stlouis.asp.

6. What is time series data? Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Sources of Economic Data.” Accessed October 21, 2013. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/sources?pageID=1.

8. Notes

12. The Effects of Open Data Policy on FRED

14. http://www.lisdatacenter.org/

15. LIS Highlights • What is microdata? • largest available database of income microdata • harmonized microdata that enable high-quality, cross-national, comparative research • data from 40 countries, 220 datasets in 8 cross-sections (waves) • 29 years old • poverty measurement and analysis • gender gaps in employment, earnings, occupations, and income • user registration to access microdata, key figures (public) Source: Gornick, Janet, BerglindRagnarsdóttir, and Sarah Kostecki. “LIS: Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.” In Understanding Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences. Zurich: Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences, 2013. LIS Technical Paper Number 5: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/techwps/5.pdf

16. Audience

17. Access to Microdata– LISSY registered users only

18. SPSS CPS Wave 6 Data

19. Access to Microdata – Web Tabulator registered users only

21. Restrictions on Income Microdata

22. Data Journey Country X survey LIS variable template LIS database This can take 3-6 months of manual coding of the data to the LIS template (disaggregates the data) Example from harmonization guidelines: Household head can be main income earner, person most knowledgeable about the budgetary situation of the household, eldest person, person responsible for the dwelling contract, or simply selfdefined by the respondents, etc.

23. Data

25. Are these resources big data or Big Data?

26. “Big Data is a shorthand label that typically means applying the tools of artificial intelligence, like machine learning, to vast new troves of data beyond that captured in standard databases. The new data sources include Web-browsing data trails, social network communications, sensor data and surveillance data.” Source: Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data.” The New York Times, February 11, sec. Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html.

27. “Link these communicating sensors to computing intelligence and you see the rise of what is called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Improved access to information is also fueling the Big Data trend. For example, government data—employment figures and other information—has been steadily migrating onto the Web. In 2009, Washington opened the data doors further by starting Data.gov, a Web site that makes all kinds of government data accessible to the public.” Source: Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data.” The New York Times, February 11, sec. Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html.

28. “Data is not only becoming more available but also more understandable to computers. Most of the Big Data surge is data in the wild—unruly stuff like words, images and video on the Web and those streams of sensor data. It is called unstructured data and is not typically grist for traditional databases.” Source: Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data.” The New York Times, February 11, sec. Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html.

29. Big Data or big data—whatever it is, I think it’s an opportunity for librarians to address issues of authority, source, access, technology, privacy, and ethics.

30. Thank you for listening Falbarillo@brooklyn.cuny.edu My thanks to Keith G. Taylor, II, Data Desk Coordinator at FRED keith.g.taylor@stls.frb.org and Janet Gornick, Director of Luxembourg Income Study and Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center