Graphing Data with R

Appendix E. Importing Data from Outside of R

Some Useful Internet Data Repositories

There are many websites from which you can download datasets and to analyze with R. A few sources are presented in the list that follows, as examples of the vast universe of shared data. In many cases, it is necessary to register to use the datasets and/or agree to terms of use. Carefully read the requirements of any provider from whom you plan to acquire data. Datasets from the following sources are frequently offered in Excel or CSV format, which have already been discussed in the section “Reading from an External File”; some examples in other formats follow:

Open Access Directory (http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page)

This site provides links to downloadable data from many sources on diverse subjects, especially the sciences. Many of the datasets are free; some you must purchase. Scroll down the table of contents to “Data repositories” to see the variety of topics covered.

FedStats (http://fedstats.sites.usa.gov/)

This is a repository of many kinds of United States federal government data freely available to the public. This page has links to various government agencies sharing data.

DATA.GOV (http://catalog.data.gov/dataset)

This is another repository of federal data.

Quandl (http://www.quandl.com)

This is a repository of more than 10 million datasets that are available for free download in several formats, including R data frames. Compared to many other sources, Quandl is easy to work ...