Skip to Main Content

R Studio Basics for Data Visualization: Find Data

For the R Studio Data Visualizaton Workshops, November 2018

Tips when looking for data to use in R

RStudio and RStudio Cloud can read a variety of data file types, but beginners should look for .csv files for ease of use.

While you may be able to make some visualizations with aggregate data (data where individual points have already been added together for totals), you will most likely be thinking in terms of microdata when you want to make visualizations. This means that you would get the data for every respondent individually, say, from a survey instead of "already counted" percentages from that survey.

Use the following questions below to help you think more about where to look for data.

Additional Data Sources