How do i load data set part of the MASS library in R?

Question

I am working through this book dealing with statistical learning/machine learning and R. One of the problem states:

To begin, load in the Boston data set. The Boston data set is part of the MASS library in R.

library (MASS)

Now the data set is contained in the object Boston.

Read about the data set:

?Boston

I don't understand the syntax library(MASS). How do I get the Boston data set from this? I've tried Boston=library(MASS) but that gives me an array of words:

"MASS" "stats"  "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils" "datasets" "methods"   "base" 

I've also tried something like Boston=library(MASS::Boston) but that doesn't seem to be valid either.

Answer 1

You don't have to assign the data to a new object also called Boston, data() loads the object Boston into the global environment:

> library(MASS)
> data(Boston)
> head(Boston)
     crim zn indus chas   nox    rm  age    dis rad tax ptratio  black lstat
1 0.00632 18  2.31    0 0.538 6.575 65.2 4.0900   1 296    15.3 396.90  4.98
2 0.02731  0  7.07    0 0.469 6.421 78.9 4.9671   2 242    17.8 396.90  9.14
3 0.02729  0  7.07    0 0.469 7.185 61.1 4.9671   2 242    17.8 392.83  4.03
4 0.03237  0  2.18    0 0.458 6.998 45.8 6.0622   3 222    18.7 394.63  2.94
5 0.06905  0  2.18    0 0.458 7.147 54.2 6.0622   3 222    18.7 396.90  5.33
6 0.02985  0  2.18    0 0.458 6.430 58.7 6.0622   3 222    18.7 394.12  5.21
  medv
1 24.0
2 21.6
3 34.7
4 33.4
5 36.2
6 28.7
>