Resource of the Week: More Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

OK, it’s numbers round-up time again — something I’m prone to do when unearthed a bunch of new statistical resources. I collect these the way other people collect stamps, coins or baseball cards. Vetted sources of statistical information are always useful for The Day Job. And please…if you have a few favorites, please let us know so we can share widely.

+ A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009 (Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research)

Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and interpretation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time. I put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers. No single metric is a good indicator, you have to evaluate the usage from multiple dimensions, so you also have to factor in what are users doing, time on site, interaction, and of course, did they end up buying, recommending products, or improving their lives.

Owyang, an analyst for Forrester, says he will be updating this information throughout the year.

+ State Economies at a Glance (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces Economy at a Glance pages at the national, regional, state, and metropolitan area levels. The data displayed in these pages are assembled from different surveys and programs conducted by BLS. The Economy at a Glance pages are refreshed with current data every time any of the source programs releases new statistics. This typically occurs 7-9 times per month.

+ Tax Statistics (Produced by the Statistics of Income Division and Other Areas of the Internal Revenue Service)

Categories include business tax statistics, individual tax statistics, IRS operations/budget/compliance, statistics of income, charitable and exempt organization statistics, products/publications/papers, statistics by tax form, and more. The What’s New page points to the most recent information added to the site and also to the most popular items. If you want to be alerted when new statistics are posted, you can subscribe to the Tax Stats Dispatch e-mail list.

+ Fire Statistics (U.S. Fire Administration)

This page contains statistics on fires that occur in the United States and analytical and topical reports that describe the national fire problem. Also included are statistics related to firefighters and fire departments.

The U.S. Fire Administration is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

+ Credit card industry facts, debt statistics 2006-2009

This page contains credit card-related statistics — including statistics on credit card debt, credit card delinquencies, credit scores, credit card interest rates, bankruptcies, average credit card debt and more — compiled by the CreditCards.com staff. Statistics on this page will be updated regularly as we receive new or updated credit card data. Some data may appear multiple times on the page because the information is applicable in multiple categories.

CreditCards.com is an established online credit card marketplace that partners with a number of reliable media outlets such as Forbes.com, bizjournals.com, and Forbes.com. Read more about the site here (PDF; 36 KB).

+ Insurance Related Data (Insurance Information Institute)

The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) compiles the latest facts and statistics relating to the insurance industry.

You’ll find some numbers here that might otherwise be difficult to locate, such as data on annuities, the world’s deadliest catastrophes (including insurance loss data), worst terrorists attacks (with insured property losses), and more.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 and is filed under Resource of the Week, Source File, Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.