4  Data Import

Intended Learning Outcomes

  • Be able to inspect data
  • Be able to import data from a range of sources
  • Be able to identify and handle common problems with data import

Walkthrough video

There is a walkthrough video of this chapter available via Echo360. Please note that there may have been minor edits to the book since the video was recorded. Where there are differences, the book should always take precedence.

4.1 Set-up

Create a new project for the work we’ll do in this chapter named 04-data. Then, create and save a new R Markdown document named data.Rmd, get rid of the default template text, and load the packages in the set-up code chunk. You should have all of these packages installed already, but if you get the message Error in library(x) : there is no package called ‘x’, please refer to Section 1.3.1.

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
library(tidyverse)     # includes readr & tibble
library(rio)           # for almost any data import/export
library(haven)         # for SPSS, Stata,and SAS files
library(readxl)        # for Excel files
library(googlesheets4) # for Google Sheets
```

We’d recommend making a new code chunk for each different activity, and using the white space to make notes on any errors you make, things you find interesting, or questions you’d like to ask the course team.

Download the Data import cheatsheet.

4.2 Built-in data

You’ll likely want to import you own data to work with, however, Base R also comes with built-in datasets and these can be very useful for learning new functions and packages. Additionally, some packages, like tidyr, also contain data. The data() function lists the datasets available.

# list datasets built in to base R
data()

# lists datasets in a specific package
data(package = "tidyr")

Type the name of a dataset into the console to see the data. For example, type ?table1 into the console to see the dataset description for table1, which is a dataset included with tidyr.

?table1

You can also use the data() function to load a dataset into your global environment.

# loads table1 into the environment
data("table1")

4.3 Looking at data

Now that you’ve loaded some data, look the upper right hand window of RStudio, under the Environment tab. You will see the object table1 listed, along with the number of observations (rows) and variables (columns). This is your first check that everything went OK.

Always, always, always, look at your data once you’ve created or loaded a table. Also look at it after each step that transforms your table. There are three main ways to look at your table: View(), print(), tibble::glimpse().

4.3.1 View()

A familiar way to look at the table is given by View() (uppercase ‘V’), which opens up a data table in the console pane using a viewer that looks a bit like Excel. This command can be useful in the console, but don’t ever put this one in a script because it will create an annoying pop-up window when the user runs it. You can also click on an object in the environment pane to open it in the same interface. You can close the tab when you’re done looking at it; it won’t remove the object.

View(table1)

4.3.2 print()

The print() method can be run explicitly, but is more commonly called by just typing the variable name on a blank line. The default is not to print the entire table, but just the first 10 rows.

Let’s look at the table1 table that we loaded above. Depending on how wide your screen is, you might need to click on an arrow at the right of the table to see the last column.

# call print explicitly
print(table1)

# more common method of just calling object name
table1
country year cases population
Afghanistan 1999 745 19987071
Afghanistan 2000 2666 20595360
Brazil 1999 37737 172006362
Brazil 2000 80488 174504898
China 1999 212258 1272915272
China 2000 213766 1280428583

4.3.3 glimpse()

The function tibble::glimpse() gives a sideways version of the table. This is useful if the table is very wide and you can’t easily see all of the columns. It also tells you the data type of each column in angled brackets after each column name.

glimpse(table1)
Rows: 6
Columns: 4
$ country    <chr> "Afghanistan", "Afghanistan", "Brazil", "Brazil", "China", …
$ year       <int> 1999, 2000, 1999, 2000, 1999, 2000
$ cases      <int> 745, 2666, 37737, 80488, 212258, 213766
$ population <int> 19987071, 20595360, 172006362, 174504898, 1272915272, 12804…

4.3.4 summary()

You can get a quick summary of a dataset with the summary() function, which can be useful for spotting things like if the minimum or maximum values are clearly wrong, or if R thinks that a nominal variable is numeric. For example, if you had labelled gender as 1, 2, and 3 rather than male, female, and non-binary, summary() would calculate a mean and median even though this isn’t appropriate for the data. This can be a useful flag that you need to take further steps to correct your data.

Note that because population is a very, very large number, R will use scientific notation.

summary(table1)
   country               year          cases          population       
 Length:6           Min.   :1999   Min.   :   745   Min.   :1.999e+07  
 Class :character   1st Qu.:1999   1st Qu.: 11434   1st Qu.:5.845e+07  
 Mode  :character   Median :2000   Median : 59112   Median :1.733e+08  
                    Mean   :2000   Mean   : 91277   Mean   :4.901e+08  
                    3rd Qu.:2000   3rd Qu.:179316   3rd Qu.:9.983e+08  
                    Max.   :2000   Max.   :213766   Max.   :1.280e+09  

4.4 Importing data

Built-in data are nice for examples, but you’re probably more interested in your own data. There are many different types of files that you might work with when doing data analysis. These different file types are usually distinguished by the three-letter extension following a period at the end of the file name (e.g., .xls).

Download this directory of data files, unzip the folder, and save the data directory in the 04-data project directory.

4.4.1 rio::import()

The type of data files you have to work with will likely depend on the software that you typically use in your workflow. The rio package has very straightforward functions for reading and saving data in most common formats: rio::import() and rio::export().

demo_tsv  <- import("data/demo.tsv")  # tab-separated values
demo_csv  <- import("data/demo.csv")  # comma-separated values
demo_xls  <- import("data/demo.xlsx") # Excel format
demo_sav  <- import("data/demo.sav")  # SPSS format

4.4.2 File type specific import

However, it is also useful to know the specific functions that are used to import different file types because it is easier to discover features to deal with complicated cases, such as when you need to skip rows, rename columns, or choose which Excel sheet to use.

demo_tsv <- readr::read_tsv("data/demo.tsv")
demo_csv <- readr::read_csv("data/demo.csv")
demo_xls <- readxl::read_excel("data/demo.xlsx")
demo_sav <- haven::read_sav("data/demo.sav")
Note

Look at the help for each function above and read through the Arguments section to see how you can customise import.

If you keep data in Google Sheets, you can access it directly from R using <pkg>googlesheets4", "https://googlesheets4.tidyverse.org/"). The code below imports data from a public sheet. You can set the ss argument to the entire URL for the target sheet, or just the section after “https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/”.

gs4_deauth() # skip authorisation for public data

demo_gs4  <- googlesheets4::read_sheet(
  ss = "16dkq0YL0J7fyAwT1pdgj1bNNrheckAU_2-DKuuM6aGI"
)

4.4.3 Column data types

Use glimpse() to see how these different functions imported the data with slightly different data types. This is because the different file types store data slightly differently. For example, SPSS stores factors as numbers, so the factor column contains the values 1, 2, 3 rather than low, med, high. It also stores logical values as 0 and 1 instead or TRUE and FALSE.

glimpse(demo_csv)
Rows: 6
Columns: 6
$ character <chr> "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"
$ factor    <chr> "high", "low", "med", "high", "low", "med"
$ integer   <dbl> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$ double    <dbl> 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5
$ logical   <lgl> TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, NA, TRUE
$ date      <date> 2023-02-17, 2023-02-16, 2023-02-15, 2023-02-14, 2023-02-13, …
glimpse(demo_xls)
Rows: 6
Columns: 6
$ character <chr> "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"
$ factor    <chr> "high", "low", "med", "high", "low", "med"
$ integer   <dbl> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$ double    <dbl> 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5
$ logical   <lgl> TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, NA, TRUE
$ date      <dttm> 2023-02-17, 2023-02-16, 2023-02-15, 2023-02-14, 2023-02-13, …
glimpse(demo_sav)
Rows: 6
Columns: 6
$ character <chr> "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"
$ factor    <dbl+lbl> 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2
$ integer   <dbl> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$ double    <dbl> 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5
$ logical   <dbl> 1, 1, 0, 0, NA, 1
$ date      <date> 2023-02-17, 2023-02-16, 2023-02-15, 2023-02-14, 2023-02-13, …
glimpse(demo_gs4)
Rows: 6
Columns: 6
$ character <chr> "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"
$ factor    <chr> "high", "low", "med", "high", "low", "med"
$ integer   <dbl> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$ double    <dbl> 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5
$ logical   <lgl> TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, NA, TRUE
$ date      <dttm> 2021-11-22, 2021-11-21, 2021-11-20, 2021-11-19, 2021-11-18, …

The readr functions display a message when you import data explaining what data type each column is.

demo <- readr::read_csv("data/demo.csv")
Rows: 6 Columns: 6
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr  (2): character, factor
dbl  (2): integer, double
lgl  (1): logical
date (1): date

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

The “Column specification” tells you which data type each column is. You can review data types in Appendix G. Options are:

read_csv() will guess what type of data each variable is and normally it is pretty good at this. However, if it makes a mistake, such as reading the “date” column as a character, you can manually set the column data types.

First, run spec() on the dataset which will give you the full column specification that you can copy and paste:

spec(demo)
cols(
  character = col_character(),
  factor = col_character(),
  integer = col_double(),
  double = col_double(),
  logical = col_logical(),
  date = col_date(format = "")
)

Then, we create an object using the code we just copied that lists the correct column types. Factor columns will always import as character data types, so you have to set their data type manually with col_factor() and set the order of levels with the levels argument. Otherwise, the order defaults to the order they appear in the dataset. For our demo dataset, we will tell R that the factor variable is a factor by using col_factor() and we can also specify the order of the levels so that they don’t just appear alphabetically. Additionally, we can also specify exactly what format our date variable is in using %Y-%m-%d.

We then save this column specification to an object, and then add this to the col_types argument when we call read_csv().

corrected_cols <- cols(
  character = col_character(),
  factor = col_factor(levels = c("low", "med", "high")),
  integer = col_integer(),
  double = col_double(),
  logical = col_logical(),
  date = col_date(format = "%Y-%m-%d")
)

demo <- readr::read_csv("data/demo.csv", col_types = corrected_cols)
Note

For dates, you might need to set the format your dates are in. See ?strptime for a list of the codes used to represent different date formats. For example, "%d-%b-%y" means that the dates are formatted like 31-Jan-21.

The functions from readxl for loading .xlsx sheets have a different, more limited way to specify the column types. You will have to convert factor columns and dates using mutate(), which you’ll learn about in Chapter 9, so most people let read_excel() guess data types and don’t set the col_types argument.

For SPSS data, whilst rio::import() will just read the numeric values of factors and not their labels, the function read_sav() from haven reads both. However, you have to convert factors from a haven-specific “labelled double” to a factor (we have no idea why haven doesn’t do this for you).

demo_sav$factor <- haven::as_factor(demo_sav$factor)

glimpse(demo_sav)
Rows: 6
Columns: 6
$ character <chr> "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"
$ factor    <fct> high, low, med, high, low, med
$ integer   <dbl> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$ double    <dbl> 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5
$ logical   <dbl> 1, 1, 0, 0, NA, 1
$ date      <date> 2023-02-17, 2023-02-16, 2023-02-15, 2023-02-14, 2023-02-13, …
Note

The way you specify column types for googlesheets4 is a little different from readr, although you can also use the shortcodes described in the help for read_sheet() with readr functions. There is currently no column specification for factors.

4.5 Creating data

If you need to create a small data table from scratch in R, use the tibble::tibble() function, and type the data right in. The tibble package is part of the tidyverse package that we loaded at the start of this chapter.

Let’s create a small table with the names of three Avatar characters and their bending type. The tibble() function takes arguments with the names that you want your columns to have. The values are vectors that list the column values in order.

If you don’t know the value for one of the cells, you can enter NA, which we have to do for Sokka because he doesn’t have any bending ability. If all the values in the column are the same, you can just enter one value and it will be copied for each row.

avatar <- tibble(
  name = c("Katara", "Toph", "Sokka"),
  bends = c("water", "earth", NA),
  friendly = TRUE
)

# print it
avatar
name bends friendly
Katara water TRUE
Toph earth TRUE
Sokka NA TRUE

You can also use the tibble::tribble() function to create a table by row, rather than by column. You start by listing the column names, each preceded by a tilde (~), then you list the values for each column, row by row, separated by commas (don’t forget a comma at the end of each row).

avatar_by_row <- tribble(
  ~name,    ~bends,  ~friendly,
  "Katara", "water", TRUE,
  "Toph",   "earth", TRUE,
  "Sokka",  NA,      TRUE
)
Note

You don’t have to line up the columns in a tribble, but it can make it easier to spot errors.

You may not need to do this very often if you are primarily working with data that you import from spreadsheets, but it is useful to know how to do it anyway.

4.6 Writing data

If you have data that you want to save, use rio::export(), as follows.

export(avatar, "data/avatar.csv")

This will save the data in CSV format to your working directory.

Writing to Google Sheets is a little trickier (if you never use Google Sheets feel free to skip this section). Even if a Google Sheet is publicly editable, you can’t add data to it without authorising your account.

You can authorise interactively using the following code (and your own email), which will prompt you to authorise “Tidyverse API Packages” the first time you do this. If you don’t tick the checkbox authorising it to “See, edit, create, and delete all your Google Sheets spreadsheets”, the next steps will fail.

# authorise your account 
# this only needs to be done once per script
gs4_auth(email = "myemail@gmail.com")

# create a new sheet
sheet_id <- gs4_create(name = "demo-file", 
                       sheets = "letters")

# define the data table to save
letter_data <- tibble(
  character = LETTERS[1:5],
  integer = 1:5,
  double = c(1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4, 5.5),
  logical = c(T, F, T, F, T),
  date = lubridate::today()
)

write_sheet(data = letter_data, 
            ss = sheet_id, 
            sheet = "letters")

## append some data
new_data <- tibble(
  character = "F",
  integer = 6L,
  double = 6.6,
  logical = FALSE,
  date = lubridate::today()
)
sheet_append(data = new_data,
             ss = sheet_id,
             sheet = "letters")

# read the data
demo <- read_sheet(ss = sheet_id, sheet = "letters")
Note
  • Create a new table called family with the first name, last name, and age of your family members (biological, adopted, or chosen).
  • Save it to a CSV file called “family.csv”.
  • Clear the object from your environment by restarting R or with the code remove(family).
  • Load the data back in and view it.
# create the table
family <- tribble(
  ~first_name, ~last_name, ~age,
  "Lisa", "DeBruine", 45,
  "Robbie", "Jones", 14
)

# save the data to CSV
export(family, "data/family.csv")

# remove the object from the environment
remove(family)

# load the data
family <- import("data/family.csv")

We’ll be working with tabular data a lot in this class, but tabular data is made up of vectors, which groups together data with the same basic data type. Appendix G explains some of this terminology to help you understand the functions we’ll be learning to process and analyse data.

4.7 Troubleshooting

What if you import some data and it guesses the wrong column type? The most common reason is that a numeric column has some non-numbers in it somewhere. Maybe someone wrote a note in an otherwise numeric column. Columns have to be all one data type, so if there are any characters, the whole column is converted to character strings, and numbers like 1.2 get represented as "1.2", which will cause very weird errors like "100" < "9" == TRUE. You can catch this by using glimpse() to check your data.

The data directory you downloaded contains a file called “mess.csv”. Let’s try loading this dataset.

mess <- rio::import("data/mess.csv")
Warning in (function (input = "", file = NULL, text = NULL, cmd = NULL, :
Stopped early on line 5. Expected 7 fields but found 0. Consider fill=TRUE
and comment.char=. First discarded non-empty line: <<junk,missing,0.72,b,1,2 -
3,2020-01-2>>

When importing goes wrong, it’s often easier to fix it using the specific importing function for that file type (e.g., use read_csv() rather than rio::import(). This is because the problems tend to be specific to the file format and you can look up the help for these functions more easily. For CSV files, the import function is readr::read_csv.

# lazy = FALSE loads the data right away so you can see error messages
# this default changed in late 2021 and might change back soon
mess <- read_csv("data/mess.csv", lazy = FALSE)
Warning: One or more parsing issues, call `problems()` on your data frame for details,
e.g.:
  dat <- vroom(...)
  problems(dat)
Rows: 27 Columns: 1
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (1): This is my messy dataset

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

You’ll get a warning about parsing issues and the data table is just a single column. View the file data/mess.csv by clicking on it in the File pane, and choosing “View File”. Here are the first 10 lines. What went wrong?

This is my messy dataset
junk,order,score,letter,good,min_max,date
junk,1,-1,a,1,1 - 2,2020-01-1
junk,missing,0.72,b,1,2 - 3,2020-01-2
junk,3,-0.62,c,FALSE,3 - 4,2020-01-3
junk,4,2.03,d,T,4 - 5,2020-01-4
junk,5,NA,e,1,5 - 6,2020-01-5

First, the file starts with a note: “This is my messy dataset” and then a blank line. The first line of data should be the column headings, so we want to skip the first two lines. You can do this with the argument skip in read_csv().

mess <- read_csv("data/mess.csv", 
                 skip = 2,
                 lazy = FALSE)
Rows: 26 Columns: 7
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (6): junk, order, letter, good, min_max, date
dbl (1): score

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.
glimpse(mess)
Rows: 26
Columns: 7
$ junk    <chr> "junk", "junk", "junk", "junk", "junk", "junk", "junk", "junk"…
$ order   <chr> "1", "missing", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "11",…
$ score   <dbl> -1.00, 0.72, -0.62, 2.03, NA, 0.99, 0.03, 0.67, 0.57, 0.90, -1…
$ letter  <chr> "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m…
$ good    <chr> "1", "1", "FALSE", "T", "1", "0", "T", "TRUE", "1", "T", "F", …
$ min_max <chr> "1 - 2", "2 - 3", "3 - 4", "4 - 5", "5 - 6", "6 - 7", "7 - 8",…
$ date    <chr> "2020-01-1", "2020-01-2", "2020-01-3", "2020-01-4", "2020-01-5…

OK, that’s a little better, but this table is still a serious mess in several ways:

  • junk is a column that we don’t need
  • order should be an integer column
  • good should be a logical column
  • good uses all kinds of different ways to record TRUE and FALSE values
  • min_max contains two pieces of numeric information, but is a character column
  • date should be a date column

We’ll learn how to deal with this mess in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9, but we can fix a few things by setting the col_types argument in read_csv() to specify the column types for our two columns that were guessed wrong and skip the “junk” column. The argument col_types takes a list where the name of each item in the list is a column name and the value is from the table below. You can use the function, like col_double() or the abbreviation, like "d"; for consistency with earlier in this chapter we will use the function names. Omitted column names are guessed.

function abbreviation
col_logical() l logical values
col_integer() i integer values
col_double() d numeric values
col_character() c strings
col_factor(levels, ordered) f a fixed set of values
col_date(format = ““) D with the locale’s date_format
col_time(format = ““) t with the locale’s time_format
col_datetime(format = ““) T ISO8601 date time
col_number() n numbers containing the grouping_mark
col_skip() _, - don’t import this column
col_guess() ? parse using the “best” type based on the input
# omitted values are guessed
# ?col_date for format options
ct <- cols(
  junk = col_skip(), # skip this column
  order = col_integer(),
  good = col_logical(),
  date = col_date(format = "%Y-%m-%d")
)

tidier <- read_csv("data/mess.csv", 
                   skip = 2,
                   col_types = ct,
                   lazy = FALSE)
Warning: One or more parsing issues, call `problems()` on your data frame for details,
e.g.:
  dat <- vroom(...)
  problems(dat)

You will get a message about parsing issues when you run this that tells you to run the problems() function to see a table of the problems. Warnings look scary at first, but always start by reading the message.

problems()
row col expected actual file
3 2 an integer missing data/mess.csv

The output of problems() tells you what row (3) and column (2) the error was found in, what kind of data was expected (an integer), and what the actual value was (missing). If you specifically tell read_csv() to import a column as an integer, any characters (i.e., not numbers) in the column will produce a warning like this and then be recorded as NA. You can manually set what missing values are recorded as with the na argument.

tidiest <- read_csv("data/mess.csv", 
                   skip = 2,
                   na = "missing",
                   col_types = ct,
                   lazy = FALSE)

Now order is an integer variable where any empty cells contain NA. The variable good is a logical value, where 0 and F are converted to FALSE, while 1 and T are converted to TRUE. The variable date is a date type (adding leading zeros to the day). We’ll learn in later chapters how to fix other problems, such as the min_max column containing two different types of data.

order score letter good min_max date
1 -1 a TRUE 1 - 2 2020-01-01
NA 0.72 b TRUE 2 - 3 2020-01-02
3 -0.62 c FALSE 3 - 4 2020-01-03
4 2.03 d TRUE 4 - 5 2020-01-04
5 NA e TRUE 5 - 6 2020-01-05
6 0.99 f FALSE 6 - 7 2020-01-06

4.8 Working with real data

It’s worth highlighting at this point that working with real data can be difficult because each dataset can be messy in its own way. Throughout this course we will show you common errors and how to fix them, but be prepared that when you start with working your own data, you’ll likely come across problems we don’t cover in the course and that’s just part of joy of learning programming. You’ll also get better at looking up solutions using sites like Stack Overflow and there’s a fantastic #rstats community on Twitter you can ask for help.

You may also be tempted to fix messy datasets by, for example, opening up Excel and editing them there. Whilst this might seem easier in the short term, there’s two serious issues with doing this. First, you will likely work with datasets that have recurring messy problems. By taking the time to solve these problems with code, you can apply the same solutions to a large number of future datasets so it’s more efficient in the long run. Second, if you edit the spreadsheet, there’s no record of what you did. By solving these problems with code, you do so reproducibly and you don’t edit the original data file. This means that if you make an error, you haven’t lost the original data and can recover.

4.9 Exercises

For the final step in this chapter, we will create a report using one of the in-built datasets to practice the skills you have used so far. You may need to refer back to previous chapters to help you complete these exercises and you may also want to take a break before you work through this section. We’d also recommend you knit at every step so that you can see how your output changes.

4.9.1 New Markdown

Create and save a new R Markdown document named starwars_report.Rmd. In the set-up code chunk load the packages tidyverse and rio.

We’re going to use the built-in starwars dataset that contains data about Star Wars characters. You can learn more about the dataset by using the ?help function.

4.9.2 Import and export the dataset

  • First, load the in-built dataset into the environment. Type and run the code to do this in the console; do not save it in your Markdown.
  • Then, export the dataset to a .csv file and save it in your data directory. Again, do this in the console.
  • Finally, import this version of the dataset using read_csv() to an object named starwars - you can put this code in your Markdown.
data(starwars)
export(starwars, "data/starwars.csv")
starwars <- read_csv("data/starwars.csv")
Rows: 87 Columns: 14
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (11): name, hair_color, skin_color, eye_color, sex, gender, homeworld, s...
dbl  (3): height, mass, birth_year

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

4.9.3 Convert column types

  • Check the column specification of starwars.
  • Create a new column specification that lists the following columns as factors: hair_color, skin_color, eye_color, sex, gender, homeworld, and species and skips the following columns: films, vehicles, and starships (this is because these columns contain multiple values and are stored as lists, which we haven’t covered how to work with). You do not have to set the factor orders (although you can if you wish).
  • Re-import the dataset, this time with the corrected column types.
spec(starwars)
corrected_cols <- cols(
  name = col_character(),
  height = col_double(),
  mass = col_double(),
  hair_color = col_factor(),
  skin_color = col_factor(),
  eye_color = col_factor(),
  birth_year = col_double(),
  sex = col_factor(),
  gender = col_factor(),
  homeworld = col_factor(),
  species = col_factor(),
  films = col_skip(),
  vehicles = col_skip(),
  starships = col_skip()
)

starwars <- read_csv("data/starwars.csv", col_types = corrected_cols)
cols(
  name = col_character(),
  height = col_double(),
  mass = col_double(),
  hair_color = col_character(),
  skin_color = col_character(),
  eye_color = col_character(),
  birth_year = col_double(),
  sex = col_character(),
  gender = col_character(),
  homeworld = col_character(),
  species = col_character(),
  films = col_character(),
  vehicles = col_character(),
  starships = col_character()
)

4.9.4 Plots

Produce the following plots and one plot of your own choosing. Write a brief summary of what each plot shows and any conclusions you might reach from the data.

ggplot(starwars, aes(height)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 25, colour = "black", alpha = .3) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = seq(from = 50, to = 300, by = 25)) +
  labs(title = "Height (cm) distribution of Star Wars Characters") +
  theme_classic()
ggplot(starwars, aes(height, mass)) +
  geom_point() +
  labs(title = "Mass (kg) by height (cm) distribution of Star Wars Characters") +
  theme_classic() +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = seq(from = 0, to = 300, by = 50)) +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(from = 0, to = 2000, by = 100)) +
  coord_cartesian(xlim = c(0, 300))
ggplot(starwars, aes(x = gender, fill = gender)) +
  geom_bar(show.legend = FALSE, colour = "black") +
  scale_x_discrete(name = "Gender of character", labels = (c("Masculine", "Feminine", "Missing"))) +
  scale_fill_brewer(palette = 2) +
  labs(title = "Number of Star Wars characters of each gender") +
  theme_bw()

4.9.5 Make it look nice

  • Add at least one Star Wars related image from an online source
  • Hide the code and any messages from the knitted output
  • Resize any images as you see fit
```{r, echo = FALSE, out.width = "50%", fig.cap="Adaptation of Star Wars logo created by Weweje; original logo by Suzy Rice, 1976. CC-BY-3.0"}
knitr::include_graphics("https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Star_wars2.svg/2880px-Star_wars2.svg.png")
```

Adaptation of Star Wars logo created by Weweje; original logo by Suzy Rice, 1976. CC-BY-3.0

4.9.6 Share your work

Once you’re done, share your knitted html file on the Week 4 Teams channel so other learners on the course can see how you approached the task.

4.10 Glossary

term definition
argument A variable that provides input to a function.
character A data type representing strings of text.
console The pane in RStudio where you can type in commands and view output messages.
data type The kind of data represented by an object.
double A data type representing a real decimal number
extension The end part of a file name that tells you what type of file it is (e.g., .R or .Rmd).
global environment The interactive workspace where your script runs
integer A data type representing whole numbers.
logical A data type representing TRUE or FALSE values.
na A missing value that is “Not Available”
nominal Categorical variables that don't have an inherent order, such as types of animal.
numeric A data type representing a real decimal number or integer.
panes RStudio is arranged with four window “panes”.
tabular data Data in a rectangular table format, where each row has an entry for each column.
tidyverse A set of R packages that help you create and work with tidy data
url The address of a web page (uniform resource locator)
vector A type of data structure that collects values with the same data type, like T/F values, numbers, or strings.

4.11 Further resources