List of Built in Datasets in R

R has numerous datasets that are built-in and these datasets are available in a R package called “R Datasets Package“. This is maintained by R Core team and available with base installation of R. We can find the list of built-in datasets readily available in R using R function data().

Find out Builtin datasets in R with data()

If we use data() function without any arguments, we will get the list of built-in datasets.

data()

data() opens a tab/window listing all the built-in datasets. In total, we have 104 built-in datasets in R.

List of datasets in R Datasets Package with help()

We can also get the list of all Builtin datasets in R using help() function.

help(package="datasets")

Here we specify the datasets R package name and it opens a help window like this.

List of datasets in a specific R Package with data()

We can list the available dataset in any package as follows.

# list available datasets in ggplot2 package
data(package="ggplot2")

List All Datasets from all available R packages

To list all available datasets from all R package we have available/installed in your computer is use the data() function with the following argument.

# how to list all datasets from all installed packages
data(package = .packages(all.available = TRUE))

Accessing Built-In Dataset in R

We can directly access the builtin datasets using the name of the datasets

# access built-in dataset by its name
mtcars

##                      mpg cyl  disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
## Mazda RX4           21.0   6 160.0 110 3.90 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
## Mazda RX4 Wag       21.0   6 160.0 110 3.90 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4
## Datsun 710          22.8   4 108.0  93 3.85 2.320 18.61  1  1    4    1
## Hornet 4 Drive      21.4   6 258.0 110 3.08 3.215 19.44  1  0    3    1
## Hornet Sportabout   18.7   8 360.0 175 3.15 3.440 17.02  0  0    3    2
## Valiant             18.1   6 225.0 105 2.76 3.460 20.22  1  0    3    1
## Duster 360          14.3   8 360.0 245 3.21 3.570 15.84  0  0    3    4
## Merc 240D           24.4   4 146.7  62 3.69 3.190 20.00  1  0    4    2
## Merc 230            22.8   4 140.8  95 3.92 3.150 22.90  1  0    4    2

Accessing a dataset from a R Package

We can access a dataset from a R package using the pattern packageName::datasetName. In this example below, we get storms data from dplyr package.

# access a dataset available in a package
dplyr::storms

## # A tibble: 10,010 x 13
##    name   year month   day  hour   lat  long status category  wind pressure
##    <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <int> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <chr>  <ord>    <int>    <int>
##  1 Amy    1975     6    27     0  27.5 -79   tropi… -1          25     1013
##  2 Amy    1975     6    27     6  28.5 -79   tropi… -1          25     1013
##  3 Amy    1975     6    27    12  29.5 -79   tropi… -1          25     1013
##  4 Amy    1975     6    27    18  30.5 -79   tropi… -1          25     1013
##  5 Amy    1975     6    28     0  31.5 -78.8 tropi… -1          25     1012
##  6 Amy    1975     6    28     6  32.4 -78.7 tropi… -1          25     1012
##  7 Amy    1975     6    28    12  33.3 -78   tropi… -1          25     1011
##  8 Amy    1975     6    28    18  34   -77   tropi… -1          30     1006
##  9 Amy    1975     6    29     0  34.4 -75.8 tropi… 0           35     1004
## 10 Amy    1975     6    29     6  34   -74.8 tropi… 0           40     1002
## # … with 10,000 more rows, and 2 more variables: ts_diameter <dbl>,
## #   hu_diameter <dbl>

Do you need more interesting, complex, and real world datasets? Check out TidyTuesday, a weekly social data project in R with really interesting datasets. You can also access the TidyTuesday project datasets from the R package tidyTuesdayR.