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

[Michael D. <md...@st...>]

On 09/26/2012 09:33 AM, Benjamin Root wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Michael Droettboom <md...@st... 
> <mailto:md...@st...>> wrote:
>
>     On 09/26/2012 12:28 AM, jos...@gm...
>     <mailto:jos...@gm...> wrote:
>     > On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:05 AM, Paul Tremblay
>     <pau...@gm... <mailto: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?
It was removed because the server side was a moving target and would 
constantly break.  It was based on pulling files out of the svn (and 
later git) repository, and sourceforge and github have had a habit of 
changing the urls used to do so.  All of the data that was there was 
moved into the main repository and is now installed alongside 
matplotlib, so get_sample_data() still works.

See this PR: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/498

I should have mentioned it earlier, that we do have a very small set of 
standard data sets included there -- but these other projects linked to 
above are much better and more extensive.  If we can rely on them to 
have static urls over time, I think they are much better options than 
anything matplotlib has had in the past.

Mike