Using the OS standard cache directories has several advantages:

• no __file__-relative paths, so doesn't break or download stuff in weird places when the example is pip installed
• few less .gitignore in the repo
• benefit from the OS-level cache garbage collecting / cleaning

It appears that this is a good package to obtain the current OS's cache directory: https://pypi.org/project/platformdirs/

Edit: dont forget to edit the dataset section in examples/python/README.md.