Tidy Data

Due: Sep 06 by 11:59pm

Weight: This assignment is worth 1% of your final grade.

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to introduce yourself to the “tidy data” concept and to practice modifying data frames between long and wide formats in R.

Assessment: This assignment is graded using a check system:

  • ✔+ (110%): Responses shows phenomenal thought and engagement with the course content. I will not assign these often.
  • ✔ (100%): Responses are thoughtful, well-written, and show engagement with the course content. This is the expected level of performance.
  • ✔− (50%): Responses are hastily composed, too short, and/or only cursorily engages with the course content. This grade signals that you need to improve next time. I will hopefully not assign these often.

Notice that this is essentially a pass/fail system. I’m not grading your writing ability and I’m not counting the number of words you write - I’m looking for thoughtful engagement. One or two sentences is not enough. Write at least a paragraph and show me that you did the readings assigned.

1. Software

If you haven’t yet, go to the Course Software page and install all the software we’ll need for this course. You’ll need these tools for this assignment.

2. Get Organized

Download and edit this template when working through this assignment.

3. Readings & Exercises

Unzip the template folder (make sure you unzip it!), then open the .Rproj file to open RStudio. Open the hw1.Rmd file, take notes, and write some example code as you go through the following readings / exercises:

  1. Getting Familiar with the Course: Follow Snoop’s advice and read the entire Course Syllabus (actually read the whole thing). Then review the schedule and make sure to note important upcoming deadlines.
  2. Getting Familiar with Tidy Data: Read this tidyverse article explaining the concept of tidy data.
  3. Practice Reshaping Messy Data: Go to this page and try loading at least one of the example data sets shown. Then try reshaping the data into a tidy format.

4. Reflect

Reflect on what you’ve learned while going through these readings and exercises. Is there anything that jumped out at you? Anything you found particularly interesting or confusing? Write at least a paragraph in your hw1.Rmd file.

5. Submit

To submit this assignment, create a zip file of all the files in your R project folder for this assignment. Name the zip file hw1-netID.zip, replacing netID with your netID (e.g., hw1-jph.zip). Then copy that zip file into the “submissions” folder in your Box folder created for this class (the Box folder is named your GW netID).

:::