The data set I am going to talk about is the Listing of active businesses. An “active” business is defined as a registered business whose owner has not notified the Office of Finance of a cease of business operations. It also states that there is a monthly update interval where businesses are added. This list includes all businesses that are actively registered with the Office of Finance. This data set is organized by Location account #, business name, DBA name, street address, city, and zip code. The way the data set is organized in columns makes it easy for viewers to go from one category to the other. It also includes important information that people look for when looking for nearby businesses. While this data set does a good job in laying out key information, one thing that it lacks that would be useful for viewers is a description of the businesses. Since the aim of this data set is to attract people to come to their business, adding a description would be useful here because some of the business titles don’t always make clear what kind of business it is. The added column of the DBA is useful here because it shows the name that the business is listed as. However not all businesses have a specific name they go by so it can make things confusing for people searching for businesses if the DBA name is not listed. Another thing that would be useful to add are links to business sites or reviews of the businesses. People who are searching for businesses in their area would find this data set useful because it displays the necessary information like location, and zip code making it easier to search for a business in LA. Adding categories or descriptions of different businesses would also be useful here. This data set includes a list of all different types of businesses. Adding a column that specifies businesses for example adding categories like food, beauty, and health would make for a more narrow search.
If I were to start over with this data set collection I would organize the businesses based on what they aim to do. I would also include a column where there can be a link to the businesses site and where people have given reviews on the business. Overall, adding more specific descriptions of the businesses and categorizing them would make this data set clearer for viewers.
Hi there!
This data set is interesting in how it tries to attract people to these businesses. Since for most people, data analysis is not intuitive but the content model that is used here uses simple data. I feel like most people would be turned off initially when they see a data set, but the clear layout would allow for less intimidation when accessing a data set like this. With that being said, it is interesting to note what data is left out from the data, like how you mentioned the lack of a description of the business. Another way the data set can be restructured can be to include data that would be useful to advertisers and other businesses so the businesses that are in the data set can make partnerships with the other businesses.
The dataset that I chose is very similar to yours! Mine was also about active businesses, specifically restaurants. I agree that the data is very location focused and lacks categories for business types, reviews, links, etc. Another addition to the dataset could also be activity level or popularity so that people who are looking up businesses and reading reviews can see how popular a business is.