Are there any example data sets for Python?

Question

For quick testing, debugging, creating portable examples, and benchmarking, R has available to it a large number of data sets (in the Base R datasets package). The command library(help="datasets") at the R prompt describes nearly 100 historical datasets, each of which have associated descriptions and metadata.

Is there anything like this for Python?

Answer 1

You can use rpy2 package to access all R datasets from Python.

Set up the interface:

>>> from rpy2.robjects import r, pandas2ri >>> def data(name):  ...    return pandas2ri.ri2py(r[name]) 

Then call data() with any dataset's name of the available datasets (just like in R)

>>> df = data('iris') >>> df.describe()        Sepal.Length  Sepal.Width  Petal.Length  Petal.Width count    150.000000   150.000000    150.000000   150.000000 mean       5.843333     3.057333      3.758000     1.199333 std        0.828066     0.435866      1.765298     0.762238 min        4.300000     2.000000      1.000000     0.100000 25%        5.100000     2.800000      1.600000     0.300000 50%        5.800000     3.000000      4.350000     1.300000 75%        6.400000     3.300000      5.100000     1.800000 max        7.900000     4.400000      6.900000     2.500000 

To see a list of the available datasets with a description for each:

>>> print(r.data()) 

Note: rpy2 requires R installation with setting R_HOME variable, and pandas must be installed as well.

UPDATE

I just created PyDataset, which is a simple module to make loading a dataset from Python as easy as R's (and it does not require R installation, only pandas).

To start using it, install the module:

$ pip install pydataset 

Then just load up any dataset you wish (currently around 757 datasets available):

from pydataset import data  titanic = data('titanic') 

Answer 2

There are also datasets available from the Scikit-Learn library.

from sklearn import datasets 

There are multiple datasets within this package. Some of the Toy Datasets are:

load_boston()          Load and return the boston house-prices dataset (regression). load_iris()            Load and return the iris dataset (classification). load_diabetes()        Load and return the diabetes dataset (regression). load_digits([n_class]) Load and return the digits dataset (classification). load_linnerud()        Load and return the linnerud dataset (multivariate regression).