Dataset
What is a dataset?
Data organized into a table so it can be analyzed.
A dataset is data that has been given a shape. Notes in a notebook are data, but they are not yet a dataset. We have been organizing data into tables for over 5,000 years. In our case, we assign every row to a specific interview, and every column to an interview question. This convention is not a law of nature. You can organize observations into columns and variables into rows if you want. But that would make it hard to use modern tools, and it may be confusing to your audience.
From our own dataset
The interviews table we build in Google Sheets.
Where we teach it
Lesson 1.2 of Project 1: Sibling Interviews. Watch lesson 1.2 and read the notes, free with a free account.
Related terms
- Observation: A complete record of the characteristics we observed about one person or thing.
- Variable: A characteristic or question we record for each observation.
- Value: A single data point.
- Row: A horizontal line of cells.
- Column: A vertical line of cells.
- Cell: One box in the table: where a single row meets a single column.