“Tidyverse is to modern language as base is to Shakespeare”. I told this to my mum trying to explain what the tidyverse is. Obviously there is a caveat to my analogy and I am not saying base is redundant in anyway. But I am sure to many users especially ones who have learnt base R in college or university that the tidyverse seems like a strange set of modern syntax to get your head around – and what is that pipe thing all about?! Here are the three top reasons why I love the tidyverse:

 

Reason 1 : J’adore le Pipe

The elephant in the room is the pipe %>%. I personally love the pipe as it is really just a way to chain your analytical steps in a logical way. You can filter your dataset, group it, summarize it and much more all in one line of code – how awesome is that?! It can take some time to master the pipe, but with helpful rstudio cheatsheets, online tutorials and the power of googling to debug your errors you can master the pipe too.

#dplyr #tidyverse

 

Reason 2: Speed

I got frustrate with read.csv for its slowness with large csv datasets, but as it was always so reliable, I stuck with it – until one day, where it was just too painful. I had no idea how the loading process was going and whether I had enough time to make myself a cup of tea, so I had to find an alternative. I started using fread.csv from data.table but then came along read_csv from the readr within the tidyverse, and it saved the day. I love readr as it fast and I can watch its progress thanks to tibble (which gives a progress bar of the loading) so now I know if I have time for tea.

#readr #tidyverse

 

Reason 3: Awww ggplot2

Much love and respect for ggplot2! Not only can you make great graphs and visualizations which are super pretty, but also communicate complicated relationships and insights in an effective and efficient manner. And I even know python programmers who use it for its power and beauty! Plus the ggthemes are just awesome and I think every organization should have their own one – its a must try!

#ggplot2 #tidyverse

 

I love the tidyverse for seemingly simple reasons but that’s the beauty of programming. It’s the little things that make a big difference day to day. I am sure there are new and exciting things that I am yet to discover within the tidyverse and I look forward to exploring them when I do. #bangbang!

 

Fun Facts: Tidyverse google trends

People are searching from around the world to learn more about the ‘tidyverse’. The Danes are one of the top searching users of the ‘tidyverse’. My favourite top related search term when people are googling ‘tidyverse’ is ‘cheating’ – I do wonder what kind of ‘cheating tidyverse’ tips they are looking for.

Top countries searching ‘tidyverse’

1)      Denmark

2)      Switzerland

3)      Sweden

4)      United States

5)      Australia

Two interesting rising related search terms with ‘tidyverse’ are ‘Time Series’ and ‘Regression analysis’

   Figure 1. Top related search terms  when  people googled for ‘tidyverse

     (Data source: Google trends using PMassicotte/gtrendsR – Sept 2016-2017)