Data Tables and the “Tidyverse”

This chapter discusses the improvements and new features introduced by the package data.table and some notable packages in the “tidyverse” collection of packages. In particular, the packages data.table and dplyr are compared in terms of the features they provide and how computationally efficient they are. Also the features for “tidying” data using the tidyr package are discussed.

Below is the supporting material for the various sections of the chapter.

Data Tables

Creating data tables

Subsetting data tables

Summarizing data tables

Modifying data tables

The Tidyverse

Importing data with the haven package

Subsetting data with dplyr

Summarizing data with dplyr

Modifying data with the dplyr package

A Comparison between the Approaches

Preparing example data for the benchmark study

Benchmark study: Computing group summaries

Benchmark study: Modifying data within groups

Summary of the benchmark study

Tidying Data Using the tidyr Package

Reshaping data to long format with tidyr

Reshaping data to wide format with tidyr

Filling and completing with tidyr