Business Center Database Guides: Simply Analytics

You are welcome to create an account with SimplyAnalytics before you begin your search.  The advantage of creating an account is SimplyAnalytics will remember your past searches for whenever you return to the database. However, most of the time NYPL librarians just elect to "sign in as a guest" : 

(you can either watch a brief tour of the database, or 'x' out of this promotion) : 

Starting out, you want to chose what geographic area you'd like to focus on.  You can choose to search on a state, city, county, zip code or census tract.  If you make a mistake here, you can change your geographic criteria later when you craft your search : 

SimplyAnalyics begins with suggested data to include in your search.  If you do not want to include this "seed" data, simply click on the 'x'. 

At the Business Center, we mostly use one of these two choices when searching SimplyAnalytics.  Either a Map, or a Comparison table.  The Map is helpful when you want to see one data point over a geographical region.  The Comparison Table is useful when you want to few many data points in a spreadsheet : 

At the top left hand corner you will see the SimplyAnalytics logo, and underneath it two buttons we will use to create our comparison table search. Clicking on location is where you can adjust or add locations to your search.  You can search by State, County, City, Zip Code all the way down to Census Tract. We chose New York for our search, now we're going to look for data in New York.  Click on the Data Button. 

Here is the interface for searching what data sets SimplyAnalytics has available to search.  You can either browse SimplyAnalytics pre-defined catagories for data, as seen in the lower section of icons, or try searching for data in the search field.  We're going to use the search field for "Video Games". 

After searching "Video Games" SimplyAnalytics shares with us all the different data sets it offers related to our search term.  If the results on the right hand side in red are too overwhelming, you can further limit your choices with the limits in blue on the left : 

When you want to select a data set to view, simply click on that data to view a blue check mark.  The check mark means that set has been selected and will be in your results. 

After you have chosen all the data sets you would like to view, click on the blue button on the right hand side of the screen, Comparison Table. 

You will now be able to view your results.  Here are all the data sets related to Video Games we selected to view for information in New York, NY.  If you would like to add additional locations, or additional data, simply click on either the Data or Location buttons. 

Any time you are ready to export your data, you can look for the Export button at the top right side of the screen : 

Exporting will then allow you to choose the spreadsheet file top you would like to export your data as : 

This time when we start our search, we're going to chose Map instead of a comparison table. 

Now on the left hand side, you will see the Businesses button light up. Click on it to search for a business type : 

In the search field, we're going to look for "barbershops" : 

On the right hand side of the screen, look for the Map button and click on it : 

Now you will see all barbershops in an area of interest.  Use the zoom scroll to adjust the focus of the map and zoom into a neighborhood to view all the locations of your searched business type. 

You can also revert back to a traditional spreadsheet view of all the searched businesses by clicking on Businesses on the right hand side : 

You will then see this view of a spreadsheet which you are welcome to export in your preferred spreadsheet file format : 

By using the Time Series view from Simply Analytics, we can pick one data point and view its change over history.  This is a great way to view a trend or growth in a sector or a demographic. The Time Series view is a way to use Simply Analytics that transcends geography and location. Any business  (i.e. e-businesses) can use the information from Time Series to make decisions base upon customer or industry trends over time. 

To use Time Series, either chose this view at the onset of your project : 

Or if you've already set up your project, you can add a Time Series view on the right hand side of the Simply Analytics interface by clicking on New View : 

Let's do a data search on the left hand side.  Let's look for "video games" : 

Here are the search results, we can settle on the simple category of just "video games" (and we're going to use Kings County, NY for our Location)  :

Now we click on Time Series Table on our right hand side : 

Here we can now see the results of the Time View Table, and we can view the history of video game spending in Kings County, NY :