Resource of the Week: More Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
Judging by the e-mail we got and the number of links-to-us, last week's collection of niche statistics was somewhat of a hit. Well, there are plenty more in our ever-growing collection. So here is another handful of fishing holes for interesting numbers.
ATA produces the Airline Cost Index to monitor trends in the cost of inputs (e.g., labor, fuel, food, aircraft ownership, airport landing fees, insurance, utilities, interest) to the provision of air service over time. The various indices also facilitate comparisons among the components themselves and between airline costs and broader economic indicators. Long-term cost trends are important determinants of airfares.
The airline industry is perpetually in the news. See why.
+ Port Industry Statistics
Brought to you by the American Association of Port Authorities, this collection includes data in PDF or xls format concerning:
Port Security Fees
World Port Rankings - 2006*
World Seaborne Trade - 1975-2006*
North American Port Container Traffic - 2007 **
2006 U.S. Port Cargo Tonnage Rankings*
2003 U.S. Port Rankings By Cargo Value*
Port of Mexico - Container Traffic (1990-2006)*
U.S. / Canada Container Traffic in TEUs (1990 - 2007)*
Container Handling Ports of Central and South America (1997-2006) **
Other fishing holes for port/shipping statistics include:
Regional Economic Conditions (RECON) was originally designed to assist the FDIC in the examination process by providing economic information at the state, MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), and county levels. It is helpful in the analysis of risks facing financial institutions. We believe that easy access to timely, high-quality information about economic conditions and risks could be of benefit to some banks, as well as the general public.
Using RECON, anyone with internet access is able to drill down to any state, MSA, or county to view standard graphs, tables, and maps depicting economic conditions and how they have changed over time.
RECON contains a 'shopping cart' feature that allows the user to assemble charts and tables of interest and then print them together at the end of their session.
Economic data is arranged by geography. Start by choosing a state from the dropdown menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
We like this one because it allows us to access county- and MSA-level economic performance data that is updated regularly. Your tax dollars at work.
+ Transportation Construction Employment Report
This monthly report, from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, is its own little economic indicator. It provides detailed information on highway, street, bridge and tunnel contractor employment, including trends.
The WebCASPAR database provides easy access to a large body of statistical data resources for science and engineering (S&E) at U.S. academic institutions. WebCASPAR emphasizes S&E, but its data resources also provide information on non-S&E fields and higher education in general.
This National Science Foundation resource includes a wide range of statistics on such things as earned doctorates, federal research funding, R&D expenditures at institutions of higher learning, research facilities, and more.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
