A good candidate for such an exercise is the "World population data sheet" available from Population Reference Bureau. It contains all the countries of the world, basic demographic info (% over 65, % under 19, crude birth rate, crude death rate, GNP per capita, etc.), and some items are missing for some countries. There are enough countries, and enough data and enough variation, to make the exercise interesting. Unfortunately, there's no "agreed upon" classification. However, in my analyses, I typically end up with three clusters: Older developed nations with low CBR and low CDR and high percapita GNP, developing nations with modest CBR and CDR, young populations and medium percap GNP, and developing nations with high CBR and CDR, very young populations and low percap GNP. I may have an old 1987 data sheet entered in stata format, if I can find it in my old files. If interested in that year, feel free to contact me directly. Dean H. Judson, Ph.D., Mathematical Statistician and Group Leader Administrative Records Evaluation and Linkage Group Planning, Research and Evaluation Division U.S. Bureau of the Census Washington, DC 20233 Phone: 301-457-4222 Fax: 301-457-6864 email: [log in to unmask] Lyn Hunt <[log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] NZ> cc: Sent by: Subject: Data set required please "Classification, clustering, and phylogeny estimation" <[log in to unmask] unysb.edu> 03/20/2002 06:54 PM Please respond to "Classification, clustering, and phylogeny estimation" Would somebody be able to recommend a data set that I could use that meets the following criteria. It needs to be suitable for clustering and contain both categorical and continuous variables with missing values in some variables. It would also be good if there were some commonly agreed classification as with Fisher's Iris data. Thanks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lyn Hunt Phone: 64 7 838 4466 ext 8338 Department of Statistics, Fax: 64 7 838 4155 University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------