UF students can now follow 3 billion data collections like they follow their favorite celebrities on Twitter.
Students, faculty and staff with a UF email address have access to live data series from around the world with dataZoa.
The resource allows users to create and customize their own personal dashboards of information that update automatically.
The aggregator uses government and private sources to gather data on topics ranging from unemployment to weather, said Jay Kemp Smith, the creator of dataZoa.
Through dataZoa, students can upload tables and charts to their iPhone or tablet.
DataZoa is an excellent way for students to learn how to look at data for an employer in a variety of fields, Smith said.
UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research has used dataZoa to create an online database about the state of Florida. Bureau Director Christopher McCarty said the data tool is valuable because it brings information like unemployment rates and income data together.
“All those things are in bunches of different places,” he said. “And you want to have them all on your space on dataZoa. A student might have different research interests. They might want to maintain their own website with their own set of indicators that they’re interested in.”
Smith said that a student’s ability to know how to use raw data could be useful in workplace.
UF business administration sophomore Colin Campbell said he agrees that the data program would be very valuable as an aspiring entrepreneur.
“Once summer comes around I will have time to do some personal research,” he said, “and this data would be just as valuable to me if not more to my employer.”
[A version of this story ran on page 9 on 10/21/2014]
