Educational content ideas/data sets

For other ideas, see Educational content ideas

Interesting Data Sets

I know of Internet resources that present interesting data sets. But I don't undestand copyright laws enough to know if these sets can be incorporated into the OLPC project, so I'll just give examples of what I mean:

Positions of Stars in the sky
Contours of continents (GIS data)
Chemical Elements Tables: http://www.geocities.com/ajmas/docs/atomicelements
Data sets collected by Gleducar: http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/Datos_como_materia_prima_de_aprendizaje
Data sets collected by Edusig (Python in Education): http://wiki.python.org/moin/EduSig/DataResources
The value of PI to a millon places: http://neoparaiso.com/logo/valor-de-pi.html
Table of Prime factors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_prime_factors
Common Names of People: http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/Nombres_Propios_de_Personas
Spanish last names: http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/Lista_de_Apellidos
Solar System Planet statistics: http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/Datos_sobre_los_Planetas
Geopolitical Statistics: http://www.xist.org/default1.aspx
UNICEF Maps concerning children (spanish): http://www.unicef.org/spanish/sowc05/maps.html
Dinosaurs Data files: http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/nature-online/dino-directory/about-teachers.dsml (not open)
Nutritional Content of Different types of food: http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964
Roller Coaster Stats (to study energy conversion)
Species Evolution Trees
Species Statistics: estimated numbers of individuals, geographic location
The Powers of 10 tutorial: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Natural Disasters Statistics: Type, How many people affected, Affected regions, Dates (is "disaster" the right word?)
Properties of Elements and Natural Substances: uses
Most often used words in a language
Words that rhyme
Collections of words with ortographic or phonetic properties
Timelines: technology advances, evolution, life forms, creation of continents, planetary formation, human evolution, philosophycal movements. Like: the Histomap of World History, Compact timeline of global history

Heights of Skyscrapers: http://www.skyscraperpage.com/ (might be insulting to poor countries)

Miscfiles: http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/miscfiles.html

(Or localized alternatives)

connectives (prepositions, pronouns, and the like)
web2- Webster's Second International English wordlist
web2a- Webster's Second Internations appendix english wordlist
propernames- some common proper names
airport- list of three letter codes for some major airports
birthtoken- traditional stone and flower for each month
inter.phone- international country telephone codes
cities.dat- geographic coordinates of many major cities
postal.codes- postal codes for US and Mexican states and
languages- two-letter codes for languages, from ISO 639
currency- currency abbreviations and names
countries- country abbreviations and names and capital cities
jargon.html- The Jargon file (same as the _Hacker's_Dictionary_)
us-constitution- The Constitution of the United States of America
us-declaration- The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

Project Gutenberg Data: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/8

Other Data Sets available

Many environmental agencies and monitoring groups are putting their data online. This could be particularly important for students in developing nations, where poverty is often coupled with environmental problems. Older students can use this data to learn about the environment and even write their own scientific papers. One example of this kind of database can be found here: http://sev.lternet.edu/projects.php?meid=15, although there are many others. Their numbers continue to grow, especially since NSF encourages data sharing: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/broaderimpacts.pdf.