Numbers Junkie Shares Favorite Data Sets

I confess that I am a numbers and statistics junkie. Throughout the years countless columns have been dedicated to this subject and though I occasionally feel like I am inflicting my obsession on you, I still believe there are fascinating things to be learned from all this data – particularly about our peninsula and Wisconsin.

One of my favorite data sets is a report from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue titled “Wisconsin Municipal Income Per Return Report” which details the Adjusted Gross Income (taken from the annual state income tax forms), broken down by county and municipality, for the entire state.

2007 Door County AGI

I am particularly fond of this report because I believe that adjusted gross income (AGI) is a more accurate reflection of a household’s annual budget. In other words, the AGI gives one of the best pictures possible of the money a household had to work with during the previous year.

2011 Door County AGI

Below is the Door County section from the reports for 2007, 2011 and 2012 (taken from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue website), which shows you in snapshot fashion how the entire report (which is very large) is organized. Note that when you see Sturgeon Bay, Egg Harbor and Forestville listed twice in the 2007 table, one of the listings is for the township and the other is for the municipality.

2012 Door County AGI

There’s a lot of information here, so peruse it at your leisure and I encourage you to save this column for reference. My observations will have to wait until next week due to space limitations. I will anticipate one piece of data that will leap out at you, however: someone(s) in the Village of Egg Harbor enjoyed quite a windfall in 2012.