19 R and the Tidyverse
| Learning Objectives: |
| Use Tidyverse R packages to do interactive data manipulation and plotting |
In the previous section you worked through a swirl course that introduced you to some of the features of base R. In this section we’re going to have you work through part of the book R for Data Science (2nd edition).
This book will introduce you to R through the window of a set of R packages known as the tidyverse. These packages implement a fundamentally different approach for manipulating and visualizing data. The tidyverse approach has many strengths, and it employs a thoughtful and consistent approach to data analysis that irons out a few of the quirks of R and has rightfully become very popular. R for Data Science will explain not just the features of the tidyverse, but also explain some of the motivation and philosophy behind it.
You should work through the introductory sections and the section Whole Game (Chapters 1-8). Be sure to do the exercises, and if you have questions about them, please reach out.
A couple brief tips:
- Some chapters will expect you to install packages you won’t already have.
- Pay special attention to Chapters 4 and 6. They offer practical advice about habits of writing code and managing R projects that will save you time and pain.
For future reference, see these tidyverse cheat sheets: