SCOTS: The Searchable Collection of Time Series

Abstract

Instructors searching for interesting time series data to use for class illustrations or assignments can draw from the data files that accompany their text books. They can also search for data from annual reports, trade organizations, government entities, and other public sources. However, the amount of data accompanying textbooks is limited, and determining what public data might be available and then finding it is not simple, making it time consuming to find new examples for large classes or multiple offerings of a course. The search becomes more complicated for the instructor who needs to find data with specific types of trend or seasonality to illustrate concepts for students. This article presents the SCOTS master table, a searchable Excel file that provides information about and links to a curated collection of real time series data files stored in Excel format. Instructors can easily filter the list to find a time series with the kinds of features they want and download the Excel file to use in class. Many of the data files in this collection have been used for class assignments, and examples of assignment questions are included in the article. The supplement file is available at http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ited.2017.0188 .