Re: [Matplotlib-users] default data sets for matplotlib?

[Benjamin R. <ben...@ou...>]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote:

> On 09/26/2012 12:28 AM, jos...@gm... wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:05 AM, Paul Tremblay <pau...@gm...>
> wrote:
> >> In R, there are many default data sets one can use to both illustrate
> code
> >> and explore the scripting language. Instead of having to fake data, one
> can
> >> pull from meaningful data sets, created in the real world. For example,
> this
> >> one liner actually produces a plot:
> >>
> >> plot(mtcars$hp~mtcars$mpg)
> >>
> >> where mtcars refers to a built-in data set taken from Motor Trend
> Magazine.
> >> I don't believe matplotlib has anything similar. I have started to
> download
> >> some of the R data sets and store them as pickles for my own use. Does
> >> anyone else have any interest in creating a repository for these data
> sets
> >> or otherwise sharing them in some way?
> > Vincent converted several R datasets back to csv, that can be easily
> > loaded from the web with, for example, pandas.
> > http://vincentarelbundock.github.com/Rdatasets/
> > The collection is a bit random.
> >
> > statsmodels has some datasets that we use for examples and tests
> > http://statsmodels.sourceforge.net/devel/datasets/index.html
> > We were always a bit slow with adding datasets because we were too
> > cautious about licensing issues. But R seems to get away with
> > considering most datasets to be public domain.
> > We keep adding datasets to statsmodels as we need them for new models.
> >
> > The machine learning packages like sklearn have packaged the typical
> > machine learning datasets.
> >
> > If you are interested, you could join up with statsmodels or with
> > Vincent to expand on what's available.
> >
> It seems to me like contributing to (rather than duplicating) the work
> of one of these projects would be a great idea.  It would also be nice
> to add functionality in matplotlib to make it easier to download these
> things as a one-off -- obviously not exactly the same syntax as with R,
> but ideally with a single function call.
>
> Mike
>
>
We did have such a thing.  matplotlib.cbook.get_sample_data().  I think we
got rid of it for 1.2.0?

Ben