Every statistics class, science fair and research report hits the same wall: you need real data, and most real data is either locked behind a paywall, a mess to clean up, or about something nobody cares about.
Wikipedia page views fix all three. They're free, already clean, and they exist for almost any topic you find interesting, from your favorite game to a historical event. I made a free Google Sheet that charts five years of them for any two topics, the Wikipedia Trends Tracker.
The short answer
For free real-world data for a school project, use Wikipedia page views: the number of people who read a Wikipedia article each month. Wikimedia publishes them publicly back to 2015. Paste two Wikipedia links into the free Trends Tracker template in Google Sheets and you get five years of monthly numbers and a chart you can use in your project.
Why it makes a good project
- Any topic you like. Sports, games, music, animals, inventions, countries. If it has a Wikipedia article, it has data.
- A real question. "Which is more popular?" or "When did interest peak, and why?" is a question you can actually answer.
- Enough data to analyze. Sixty months per topic is plenty for averages, maximums, growth rates, and a line graph.
- A citable source. Your teacher can check it.
How to do it, step by step
- Pick a question with two things in it, like "Are cats or dogs more popular?"
- Find the Wikipedia article for each. Copy the address from your browser.
- Get the free template from the Trend Tracker page and make a copy in your Google Drive. If you use a school Google account, make sure it lets you copy files from outside your school.
- Open the Controls tab. It's the first one.
- Paste one link into Page 1 and the other into Page 2.
- Set Range to All time and Daily or monthly to Monthly.
- Click Fetch views + chart. The first time, Google asks you to allow the script.
- Look at the chart. Which line is higher most months? When are the biggest spikes?
- For each spike, find out what happened that month. That's your analysis.
Project ideas that work well
- Dogs vs Cats. One of them wins every month. See which on the Dogs vs Cats page.
- Soccer vs Football. On Wikipedia, "soccer" is called Association football. Its biggest month lines up with the World Cup final. See the Soccer vs Football page.
- Minecraft vs Roblox. Two huge games with very different lines. See the Minecraft vs Roblox page.
- Seasonal topics. Compare something with a season, like a holiday or a sport, against something without one. Find the pattern.
- News events. Pick a topic that was in the news and measure how long the interest lasted.
Things to calculate
Once your numbers are in the sheet, these are easy wins for a statistics or math project:
-
Average monthly views for each topic, with
AVERAGE. -
The peak month, with
MAX, then find which month it was. -
Year-over-year change: add up each year with
SUMand compare. -
How many months topic A beat topic B, with
COUNTIFon a column that subtracts one from the other.
How to cite it
Something like: "Monthly page views of the English Wikipedia articles 'Cat' and 'Dog', human readers only, from the Wikimedia pageviews API, accessed through the Wikipedia Trends Tracker (Better Sheets), [month you accessed it]." Ask your teacher what citation style they want.
FAQ
Is Wikipedia page view data reliable enough for school?
Yes. It's published by the Wikimedia Foundation and used by professional researchers. Just be clear that it measures how many people read an article, not how many people like something.
Does it cost anything?
No. The data is free and the template is free.
Can I compare three things?
Yes. Paste a third link into Page 3.
Get real data for your project in two minutes. Get the free Wikipedia Trends Tracker, pick your two topics, and paste the links.
More on tracking trends
- How to compare the popularity of two things with real data.
- How to see Wikipedia page views over time.
- How to measure public interest in a topic, including how to cite page views.
