Challenge 3 Instructions

challenge_3
Tidy Data: Pivoting
Author

Meredith Rolfe

Published

January 2, 2023

Code
library(tidyverse)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, warning=FALSE, message=FALSE)

Challenge Overview

Today’s challenge is to:

  1. read in a data set, and describe the data set using both words and any supporting information (e.g., tables, etc)
  2. identify what needs to be done to tidy the current data
  3. anticipate the shape of pivoted data
  4. pivot the data into tidy format using pivot_longer

Read in data

Read in one (or more) of the following datasets, using the correct R package and command.

  • animal_weights.csv ⭐
  • eggs_tidy.csv ⭐⭐ or organicpoultry.xls ⭐⭐⭐
  • australian_marriage*.xlsx ⭐⭐⭐
  • USA Households*.xlsx ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  • sce_labor_chart_data_public.csv 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Briefly describe the data

Describe the data, and be sure to comment on why you are planning to pivot it to make it “tidy”

Anticipate the End Result

The first step in pivoting the data is to try to come up with a concrete vision of what the end product should look like - that way you will know whether or not your pivoting was successful.

One easy way to do this is to think about the dimensions of your current data (tibble, dataframe, or matrix), and then calculate what the dimensions of the pivoted data should be.

Suppose you have a dataset with \(n\) rows and \(k\) variables. In our example, 3 of the variables are used to identify a case, so you will be pivoting \(k-3\) variables into a longer format where the \(k-3\) variable names will move into the names_to variable and the current values in each of those columns will move into the values_to variable. Therefore, we would expect \(n * (k-3)\) rows in the pivoted dataframe!

Example: find current and future data dimensions

Lets see if this works with a simple example.

Code
df<-tibble(country = rep(c("Mexico", "USA", "France"),2),
           year = rep(c(1980,1990), 3), 
           trade = rep(c("NAFTA", "NAFTA", "EU"),2),
           outgoing = rnorm(6, mean=1000, sd=500),
           incoming = rlogis(6, location=1000, 
                             scale = 400))
df
# A tibble: 6 × 5
  country  year trade outgoing incoming
  <chr>   <dbl> <chr>    <dbl>    <dbl>
1 Mexico   1980 NAFTA    1303.    1556.
2 USA      1990 NAFTA    1339.    1623.
3 France   1980 EU        513.    -190.
4 Mexico   1990 NAFTA    1447.    1374.
5 USA      1980 NAFTA     374.     630.
6 France   1990 EU        966.    1908.
Code
#existing rows/cases
nrow(df)
[1] 6
Code
#existing columns/cases
ncol(df)
[1] 5
Code
#expected rows/cases
nrow(df) * (ncol(df)-3)
[1] 12
Code
# expected columns 
3 + 2
[1] 5

Or simple example has \(n = 6\) rows and \(k - 3 = 2\) variables being pivoted, so we expect a new dataframe to have \(n * 2 = 12\) rows x \(3 + 2 = 5\) columns.

Challenge: Describe the final dimensions

Document your work here.

Any additional comments?

Pivot the Data

Now we will pivot the data, and compare our pivoted data dimensions to the dimensions calculated above as a “sanity” check.

Example

Code
df<-pivot_longer(df, col = c(outgoing, incoming),
                 names_to="trade_direction",
                 values_to = "trade_value")
df
# A tibble: 12 × 5
   country  year trade trade_direction trade_value
   <chr>   <dbl> <chr> <chr>                 <dbl>
 1 Mexico   1980 NAFTA outgoing              1303.
 2 Mexico   1980 NAFTA incoming              1556.
 3 USA      1990 NAFTA outgoing              1339.
 4 USA      1990 NAFTA incoming              1623.
 5 France   1980 EU    outgoing               513.
 6 France   1980 EU    incoming              -190.
 7 Mexico   1990 NAFTA outgoing              1447.
 8 Mexico   1990 NAFTA incoming              1374.
 9 USA      1980 NAFTA outgoing               374.
10 USA      1980 NAFTA incoming               630.
11 France   1990 EU    outgoing               966.
12 France   1990 EU    incoming              1908.

Yes, once it is pivoted long, our resulting data are \(12x5\) - exactly what we expected!

Challenge: Pivot the Chosen Data

Document your work here. What will a new “case” be once you have pivoted the data? How does it meet requirements for tidy data?

Any additional comments?