Challenge 10 Instructions

purrr

Challenge Overview

The purrr package is a powerful tool for functional programming. It allows the user to apply a single function across multiple objects. It can replace for loops with a more readable (and often faster) simple function call.

For example, we can draw n random samples from 10 different distributions using a vector of 10 means.

n <- 100 # sample size
m <- seq(1,10) # means 
samps <- map(m,rnorm,n=n) 

We can then use map_dbl to verify that this worked correctly by computing the mean for each sample.

samps %>%
  map_dbl(mean)

 [1]  1.087481  1.940752  2.903178  3.883535  5.102151  5.920883  7.099734
 [8]  7.959567  8.843674 10.041647

purrr is tricky to learn (but beyond useful once you get a handle on it). Therefore, it’s imperative that you complete the purr and map readings before attempting this challenge.

The challenge

Use purrr with a function to perform some data science task. What this task is is up to you. It could involve computing summary statistics, reading in multiple datasets, running a random process multiple times, or anything else you might need to do in your work as a data analyst. You might consider using purrr with a function you wrote for challenge 9.