Skip to content

Free real datasets for exercises

Every chapter in this book ends with Exercises with real data. Those exercises use the datasets below. Each has a code (RD-01 … RD-20) so a chapter can say "use RD-05" and you can find it here.

Rules that apply to all of them

  1. Download from the publisher, not from a copy. Links below go to the original source. The repository does not re-host real data (decision D7); tools/fetch_data.py downloads some of them reproducibly.
  2. Read the licence and credit the source in anything you hand in or publish: name, publisher, link, year downloaded. "CC BY" means you may reuse with credit; "BY-SA" means anything you build from it must use the same licence; "NC" means no commercial use.
  3. No internet? Every exercise names an offline fallback: a synthetic table shipped in datasets/ with the same shape. Teachers can also download a file once and copy it to the school computers or a USB stick.
  4. Data change. Publishers revise numbers. Write down the date you downloaded, and expect your answers to differ a little from a classmate who downloaded on another day. That is normal and worth discussing.

Licence status was checked on 2026-10-11 from the publishers' own pages where they were reachable. Check again before you publish anything. Status: ✅ open licence confirmed · ⚠️ use in class, check terms before publishing · 🚫 look, don't redistribute.

Quick table

Code Dataset Publisher Licence Access Best for (grade · unit)
RD-01 World Development Indicators (Nepal and neighbours) World Bank CC BY 4.0 ✅ API / CSV 9·7, 10·3, 10·4, 11·5, 12·2
RD-02 Our World in Data charts Our World in Data CC BY 4.0 ✅ CSV per chart 8·4, 8·7, 9·6, 10·3, 10·4
RD-03 Gapminder indicators Gapminder Foundation CC BY 4.0 ✅ CSV 8·7, 10·3, 12·7
RD-04 World Population Prospects UN DESA Population Division CC BY 3.0 IGO ✅ CSV / data portal 9·6, 9·7, 11·5
RD-05 Earthquake catalogue (Nepal region) US Geological Survey Public domain (US Gov) ✅ API CSV 8·4, 10·2, 10·4, 11·1, 11·7
RD-06 Historical daily weather for any town Open-Meteo CC BY 4.0 (free API: non-commercial) ✅ API CSV 8·6, 10·4, 11·3, 11·6
RD-07 Monthly temperature and rainfall (satellite/model) NASA POWER Free, cite NASA POWER ✅ API CSV 9·2, 10·1, 11·6, 11·8
RD-08 Kalimati vegetable and fruit prices 2013–2021 Open Data Nepal (from Kalimati Market board) CC BY (per listing) ⚠️ Manual CSV (≈9 MB) 9·5, 10·1, 10·4, 11·1, 11·6
RD-09 Annual rainfall by station 2004–2015 Open Data Nepal (from CBS Statistical Year Book) CC BY (per listing) ⚠️ Manual CSV 8·5, 9·1, 10·2
RD-10 Tourist arrivals by mode of transport 2001–2014 Open Data Nepal (from Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation) CC BY (per listing) ⚠️ Manual CSV 8·4, 9·7, 10·4
RD-11 Census 2021 preliminary results by district Open Data Nepal (from NSO) CC BY-SA ⚠️ Manual CSV 8·1, 9·3, 9·7, 11·2
RD-12 Air quality, Kathmandu 2015–2021 Open Data Nepal (upstream OpenAQ) CC BY-SA ⚠️ Manual CSV (≈8 MB) 9·2, 10·2, 10·8
RD-13 Census 2021 final results (tables) National Statistics Office Government publication ⚠️ Portal tables 9·7, 11·5, 12·7
RD-14 Glacial lakes of Nepal (inventories, potentially dangerous lakes) ICIMOD Regional Database System CC BY 4.0 ✅ Download after free sign-in 8·4, 10·2, 11·7
RD-15 Administrative boundaries (province, district, palika) OCHA / HDX, from Survey Department Check HDX page ⚠️ GeoJSON / shapefile 11·7
RD-16 OpenStreetMap features (schools, health posts, roads) OpenStreetMap contributors ODbL ✅ (share-alike) HOT export / Overpass 11·7, 12·8
RD-17 Palmer penguins Allison Horst et al. CC0 ✅ CSV 10·5, 12·1–12·4
RD-18 Global Health Observatory indicators World Health Organization CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO ⚠️ CSV / API 12·5 (class use only)
RD-19 Himalayan Database (expeditions) The Himalayan Database Personal licence; publishing needs permission 🚫 Desktop program 11·1 (explore only)
RD-20 Your own class or school data You You decide (with consent) ✅ Survey / records every grade

Details and how to download

RD-01 · World Development Indicators (World Bank) ✅

  • What: about 1,400 yearly indicators for every country since 1960: population, GDP per person, school enrolment, electricity access, remittances, forest area, life expectancy.
  • Link: https://data.worldbank.org/country/nepal (pick an indicator, then Download → CSV).
  • API pattern (one indicator, JSON): https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/NPL;IND;BGD;LKA;PAK;BTN/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?format=json&per_page=500
  • Useful codes: SP.POP.TOTL population · NY.GDP.PCAP.CD GDP per person (US$) · BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS remittances (% of GDP) · EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS access to electricity (%) · SE.PRM.ENRR primary enrolment (gross %) · SP.DYN.LE00.IN life expectancy · SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS urban population (%) · IT.NET.USER.ZS internet users (%) · AG.LND.FRST.ZS forest area (%).
  • Licence: CC BY 4.0. Credit: "World Bank, World Development Indicators (downloaded DD-MM-YYYY)".
  • Offline fallback: datasets/census-districts/clean/districts_synthetic.csv for per-capita work.

RD-02 · Our World in Data ✅

  • What: clean, documented long-run series (child mortality, life expectancy, CO₂, population, internet use).
  • Link: any chart page, for example https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality; use the Download tab, or this CSV pattern (works for most line charts): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality.csv?country=NPL~IND~BGD~LKA&csvType=filtered&useColumnShortNames=true
  • Charts that work well for Nepal: child-mortality, life-expectancy, co-emissions-per-capita, population (note: it starts at year −10000, a nice cleaning surprise), share-of-individuals-using-the-internet, mobile-cellular-subscriptions-per-100-people, share-of-population-urban, gdp-per-capita-worldbank. Some charts ignore the country filter and return every country; then filter for Nepal yourself.
  • In Python: OWID refuses requests without a browser-like user agent (HTTP 403). Use pd.read_csv(url, storage_options={"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (school project)"}).
  • Licence: CC BY 4.0 for OWID's own work; the chart page names the underlying source. Credit both.
  • Offline fallback: datasets/climate-monthly/clean/climate_monthly_synthetic.csv for time-series practice.

RD-03 · Gapminder ✅

  • What: income, life expectancy, population, babies per woman for every country, 1800 to today. Famous for the "bubble chart" by Hans Rosling.
  • Link: https://www.gapminder.org/data/ (choose an indicator → Download CSV); tool: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/.
  • Licence: CC BY 4.0. Credit: "Free data from Gapminder.org".
  • Offline fallback: draw the bubble chart by hand from five countries' values copied from the teacher's sheet.

RD-04 · UN World Population Prospects ✅

  • What: population by age and sex, births, deaths, projections to 2100 for every country.
  • Link: https://population.un.org/wpp/ (Download Center → CSV). The files are large; the teacher can save just Nepal's rows. OWID's population chart (RD-02) is built from the same source and is smaller.
  • Licence: CC BY 3.0 IGO. Credit: "UN DESA, Population Division, World Population Prospects (year of edition)".
  • Offline fallback: districts_synthetic.csv (male, female, population).

RD-05 · USGS earthquake catalogue ✅

  • What: every recorded earthquake with time, latitude, longitude, depth and magnitude. The 25 April 2015 Gorkha earthquake (magnitude 7.8) and its aftershocks are in it.
  • Link (CSV, Nepal box, April–December 2015, magnitude ≥ 4): https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/query?format=csv&starttime=2015-04-01&endtime=2015-12-31&minlatitude=26&maxlatitude=31&minlongitude=80&maxlongitude=89&minmagnitude=4 (about 300 rows). Change the dates and magnitude to get more or fewer rows. Search page: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/search/.
  • Licence: US Government work, public domain. Credit "U.S. Geological Survey" anyway.
  • Care: these events killed nearly 9,000 people. Some students lost family or homes. Teach it with respect and give students the choice of another dataset.
  • Offline fallback: air_daily_synthetic.csv for dates and distributions.

RD-06 · Open-Meteo historical weather ✅

  • What: daily or hourly temperature, rain, wind for any latitude/longitude since 1940 (reanalysis, ~10 km grid).
  • Link (Kathmandu, 2023, daily max temperature and rain): https://archive-api.open-meteo.com/v1/archive?latitude=27.70&longitude=85.32&start_date=2023-01-01&end_date=2023-12-31&daily=temperature_2m_max,temperature_2m_min,precipitation_sum&timezone=Asia/Kathmandu&format=csv Change latitude/longitude for other towns, e.g. Biratnagar 26.45, 87.27 · Pokhara 28.21, 83.99 · Nepalgunj 28.05, 81.62 · Jumla 29.27, 82.18 · Dhangadhi 28.70, 80.59. The first two lines of the CSV are location metadata; the data table starts after a blank line (in pandas: pd.read_csv(url, skiprows=3)).
  • Licence: data CC BY 4.0 ("Weather data by Open-Meteo.com"); the free API is for non-commercial use, which covers school work.
  • Care: model data, not a weather station; it smooths mountains. Good for patterns, not for record values.
  • Offline fallback: climate_monthly_synthetic.csv.

RD-07 · NASA POWER ✅

  • What: monthly temperature, rainfall, solar energy for any point, from satellites and models, since 1981.
  • Link (Kathmandu, monthly 2015–2023): https://power.larc.nasa.gov/api/temporal/monthly/point?parameters=T2M,PRECTOTCORR&community=AG&longitude=85.32&latitude=27.70&start=2015&end=2023&format=CSV
  • Why it is great for teaching: the file has a text header block (-BEGIN HEADER- … -END HEADER-), months as columns (JAN … DEC, ANN), rain in mm per day not per month, and -999 for missing values. Students must clean and reshape it: exactly the Grade 9–10 skills.
  • Licence: free and open; NASA asks users to cite "NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project".
  • Offline fallback: climate_monthly_synthetic.csv.

RD-08 · Kalimati vegetable prices ⚠️

  • What: daily minimum, maximum and average price of about 100 vegetables and fruits at Kalimati wholesale market, Kathmandu, June 2013 – May 2021. Columns: commodity, date, unit, minimum, maximum, average.
  • Link: https://opendatanepal.com/dataset/kalimati-tarkari-dataset (manual download, ≈9 MB CSV). Current prices are published daily at https://kalimatimarket.gov.np.
  • Licence: listed as Creative Commons Attribution on Open Data Nepal. Credit Open Data Nepal and the Kalimati Fruits and Vegetable Market Development Board.
  • Ideas: tomato price by month (seasonality), festival-time spikes (Dashain/Tihar), which vegetable is most volatile, inflation of a "dal-bhat-tarkari basket".
  • Offline fallback: climate_monthly_synthetic.csv (same date-handling skills).

RD-09 · Annual rainfall by station ⚠️

  • What: total rainfall (mm) per year at weather stations across Nepal, 2004–2015, from the CBS Statistical Year Book. Years are in columns (wide format), so it is ideal for "tidy data" practice.
  • Link: https://opendatanepal.com/dataset/annual-rainfall-in-mm-by-stations-from-2004-to-2015; a 2019 version ("Annual Rainfall by Station") and "Average Rainfall by Altitude" (CC BY-SA) are also on Open Data Nepal.
  • Licence: Creative Commons Attribution per listing. Credit CBS/NSO and Open Data Nepal.
  • Offline fallback: climate_monthly_synthetic.csv.

RD-10 · Tourist arrivals ⚠️

RD-11 · Census 2021 preliminary results ⚠️

  • Already described in datasets/census-districts/DATASET_CARD.md. Population, households, male/female by district.
  • Licence: CC BY-SA. Keep share-alike results separate from CC BY text (decision D8).
  • Offline fallback: districts_synthetic.csv (same columns, invented numbers).

RD-12 · Kathmandu air quality ⚠️

  • Already described in datasets/kathmandu-air-quality/DATASET_CARD.md. Daily PM2.5, PM10 and other pollutants 2015–2021 from the US Diplomatic Post and other stations via OpenAQ.
  • Licence: CC BY-SA per Open Data Nepal; OpenAQ asks you to credit the original data provider too.
  • Offline fallback: air_daily_synthetic.csv.

RD-13 · Census 2021 final results ⚠️

  • What: official tables: population by age, sex, caste/ethnicity, language, religion, literacy, disability, housing, migration, at national, provincial, district and municipal level.
  • Link: https://censusnepal.cbs.gov.np/results (National Statistics Office). Many tables can be viewed and downloaded; reports are PDFs. Microdata is restricted; do not request it for school work.
  • Licence: government publication. Use and cite freely in class; check terms before republishing whole tables.
  • Offline fallback: districts_synthetic.csv.

RD-14 · ICIMOD glacial lakes ✅

  • What: inventories of glacial lakes (area, elevation, basin, type) and a ranked list of potentially dangerous lakes in the Koshi, Gandaki and Karnali basins.
  • Link: https://rds.icimod.org → search "glacial lakes". Examples: DOI 10.26066/RDS.1971946 (glacial lakes 2020) and 10.26066/RDS.1971950 (potentially dangerous lakes). Free sign-in is needed to download.
  • Licence: CC BY 4.0 (per record). Credit "ICIMOD (2020) …" with the DOI.
  • Offline fallback: teacher prints a 20-row extract.

RD-15 · Administrative boundaries (HDX) ⚠️

  • What: outlines of the 7 provinces, 77 districts and local levels, for drawing maps. Nepal has 753 local levels, but the HDX file lists 775 admin-3 units: finding out why is itself a good data-checking exercise.
  • Link: https://data.humdata.org/dataset/cod-ab-npl. Read the licence field on the page before use.
  • Offline fallback: a printed outline map and coloured pencils (choropleth by hand).

RD-16 · OpenStreetMap ✅ (share-alike)

  • What: schools, health posts, roads, rivers, mapped by volunteers (many in Nepal by Kathmandu Living Labs and HOT after 2015).
  • Link: https://export.hotosm.org (choose an area and a feature type) or https://overpass-turbo.eu.
  • Licence: ODbL. Credit "© OpenStreetMap contributors". Anything you build from it must stay ODbL.
  • Care: OSM is only as complete as volunteers made it; missing schools may be "unmapped", not "absent".

RD-17 · Palmer penguins ✅

  • What: 344 penguins, 3 species, bill and flipper measurements. Not Nepali, but the cleanest small dataset for first classification models.
  • Link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allisonhorst/palmerpenguins/main/inst/extdata/penguins.csv
  • Licence: CC0.
  • Offline fallback: health_synthetic.csv (binary target institutional_delivery).

RD-18 · WHO Global Health Observatory ⚠️

  • What: health indicators by country: immunisation, stunting, tuberculosis, road deaths.
  • Link: https://www.who.int/data/gho.
  • Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO: fine for class work; non-commercial; share-alike. Do not paste into CC BY material.

RD-19 · Himalayan Database 🚫

  • What: every expedition to Nepal's high peaks since 1905 (Elizabeth Hawley's records): peak, year, season, members, success, deaths.
  • Link: https://www.himalayandatabase.com (free desktop program).
  • Licence: single-user licence; publishing extracts or analyses needs written permission. Use it to explore and ask questions in class; do not upload tables or results publicly without permission.

RD-20 · Your own data ✅

  • Class surveys, school attendance (anonymised, with the head teacher's permission), a weather diary, a traffic count at the school gate, prices at the local shop. Use the consent form in community/student-data-consent.md. Small, real and yours: often the best dataset of all.

Datasets we looked at and do not recommend

Dataset Why not
DrivenData "Richter's Predictor" (2015 earthquake buildings) Competition rules allow use only for the competition; no redistribution
DHS microdata Registration required; no redistribution "directly or within any tool/dashboard" (decision D6)
Census 2021 microdata Restricted access
Commercial mirrors of NRB/CPI data (CEIC etc.) Paywalled; use Nepal Rastra Bank publications at https://www.nrb.org.np instead
2015 earthquake housing survey portal (eq2015.npc.gov.np) Valuable, but no licence statement found; explore online only