Practice Day 1

This is the notebook fellows will work through on the first day of the Center for Health Journalism Hands-On R course.

You will be using daily weather summaries that have been downloaded from Climate Data Online. The explanations use Texas, but there are files for Arkansas, California, New York and North Carolina for practice.

Goals

Our goals are to:

  • Import our data.
  • Check all the column data types.
  • Add some new columns based on the date.
  • Recode some values in our data.
  • Remove some unnecessary variables/columns.
  • Export our cleaned data.

Setup

Add the entire code block for libraries.

library(tidyverse)
library(janitor)

Import

Follow the directions in the lesson to import the Texas data, starting with adding a new code block:

OYO: Import a different state

Go through all the steps above, but with different a different state.

Peeking at data

Use head, tail, glimpse and summary to look at the Texas data.

Look at the top of your data:

Look at 8 lines of the bottom of your data:

Use glimpse to see all your columns:

Use summary to learn about all your variables:

OYO: Peek at your state’s data

Use those same functions above to look at your state’s data.

Create or change data

Create year, month values based on the date. This is a multi-step process:

OYO: Make date parts

Make the same date parts, but with your own state data:

Recoding values

Use distinct so you can see the station names:

Use mutate to recode

Use recode to create a new column of short city names:

Now check your results using distinct on name and city:

OYO: Recode your cities

Make similar short names, but for your state.

Select

Create a new version of your data with only the columns you need, in the order you want them:

OYO: Select your cols

Go through the same process as above, but with your own state data.

Export

Write the file out as “rds” to the data-processed folder:

OYO: Export your state

Write your data to the data-processed folder. Make sure you use a name for your state.

Checking your notebooks

Clear out your notebook and rerun all the code. Render the HTML page.