One of the the questions that I get over and over is, which data science language do I use? I have my own preferences with regards to programming languages, but there’s not always a clear answer. In fact, my standard answer is “it depends.” You see, different languages are good for different things. But what … Read more
This tutorial will show you how to use the case_when function in R to implement conditional logic like if/else and if/elif/else. It explains the syntax, and also shows clear examples in the examples section. You can click on any of the links below, and it will take you to the appropriate section in the tutorial. … Read more
There’s sort of an open secret in the data science world: As a data professional, you’ll spend a huge amount of time doing data preparation. Cleaning, joining, reshaping, aggregating … These tasks make up a huge amount of your data work. Many data professionals say as much as 80%. You Need to Master Data Manipulation … Read more
This tutorial is part of a series of R tutorials analyzing covid-19 data. For parts 1 and 2, see the following posts: https://www.sharpsightlabs.com/blog/r-data-analysis-covid-19-part1-data-wrangling/ https://www.sharpsightlabs.com/blog/r-data-analysis-covid-19-part-2-merge-datasets/ Covid19 analysis, part 3: initial data exploration So far in our R data analysis series, we’ve spent some time getting and wrangling our data. In part1, we retrieved a single covid19 … Read more
This tutorial is part of a series of R tutorials analyzing covid-19 data. For part 1, see the following post: https://www.sharpsightlabs.com/blog/r-data-analysis-covid-19-part1-data-wrangling/ Covid19 analysis, part 2: merge datasets In this tutorial, we’re going to set up a process that will enable us to retrieve and wrangle some necessary covid19 datasets … data that we’ll need for … Read more
If you want to master data science in R, you need to master foundational tools like the mutate() function. Readers here at the Sharp Sight blog will know how much we emphasize “foundational” data science skills. If you want to be effective as a junior data scientist, you need to master the fundamental skills. If … Read more
In this blog post, I’ll show you how to rename columns in R. This is pretty straightforward if you know how to do it properly, but there are also some little challenges in renaming variables. So very briefly, I’ll explain why renaming variables in a dataframe can be a little confusing in R. Then, I’ll … Read more
You’ve probably heard it before: 80% of your work as a data scientist will be data wrangling. While that’s sort of a rough number, experience bears out that data wrangling is a massive part of your job as a data scientist. As such, it pays to know data manipulation. In fact, it pays to be … Read more
Data manipulation is a critical, core skill in data science. If you want to get a job as a data scientist, you need to master basic data manipulation operations. Ideally, you should be able to write them rapidly, and from memory (no looking them up on Google!). A very common data manipulation task is manipulating … Read more
One of the most important skills you’ll need as a data scientist (and a junior data scientist in particular) is telling stories with data. Companies, hiring managers, and recruiters not only need you to be able to find insights in data; they also need you to be able to communicate with data. In practice, communicating … Read more