Week 37.1 — Data wrangling 1

Tuesday 8 September, 12:30–16:00

Preparation, materials, and follow-up for the class on Tuesday 8 September 2026

Data wrangling using dplyr

In the this class, we will being learning key data wrangling skills. Data wrangling is the name we give to what has also been called “data processing”, “data manipulation”, and is call “data transformation” in the r4ds book. We’ll mainly use the dplyr 📦 to accomplish our data wrangling tasks.

Prepare for today’s class by

  • Reading the Data Transformation chapter in the r4ds (R for Data Science) book

  • Watch this video on data frames

  • Watch this video on the grammar of data wrangling and the key dplyr verbs

Slides

What you’ll be doing

In class we’ll do a hands on activity to practice the key data wrangling verbs, and then practice some of the common data wrangling taks:

  • Describe what students will do during the class.In the class, we will work through a hands-on activity using Mathcubes to physically apply the data wrangling verbs to a physical data set.

  • Once we have completed the hands-on activity, we will repeat the steps we performed with the Mathcubes using R code.

  • Finally, we will explore a real data set to practice the key data wrangling verbs using the dplyr package in R.

Slides

Activities

  • Be sure to complete the data analysis exercise from the class if you didn’t finish it within class time.