So, you’re right. This isn’t really a textbook. It’s a collection of flipbooks on data manipulation, visualization, and analysis. There is hardly any discussion. Nevertheless, the dynamic examples in flipbooks might be useful and quick reference. It is for folks that already may know the “what” of what they are trying to get done, but may need a bit of a refresher on the “how”. So an oversell as far as “textbook”, but ‘R Flipbook Reference’ didn’t sounds quite as good.
“I think I have figured it out through the flipbooks you have posted.” — A cool, former student
Are you an educator, but content is not appropriate for your course? Learn more about building your own flipbooks with {flipbookr} here.
Wrangle. “From Middle English wranglen, from Low German wrangeln (”to wrangle“), frequentative form of Low German wrangen (”to struggle, make an uproar“) and German rangeln (”to wrestle").
A data project often actually starts with a part than might present some frustration: data cleaning, manipulation, and management. Sometimes this is called “data wrangling” because of the possible struggles that arise in getting your data ready for data visualization and analysis. But wrangling can be satisfying. You might find yourself liking it!
The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see. — John Tukey
Data visualization is a powerful tool for analysis. The “grammar of graphics” has helped data visualizers to understanding and use the deep connections between chart types. and ggplot2 is a popular implementation of the grammar of graphics
The transferrable skills from ggplot2 are not the idiosyncracies of plotting syntax, but a powerful way of thinking about visualisation, as a way of mapping between variables and the visual properties of geometric objects that you can perceive. — Hadley Wickham
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others. — Bertrand Russell.
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. — Vincent Van Gogh
There would be no flipbooks without a great communication tool and great APIs. I’m so grateful to Yihui Xie and his team for the Rmarkdown tools, and particularly for Xaringan upon which flipbooks are built.
I’m also grateful to Hadley Wickham and his team for ggplot which was the initialy inspiration for the flipbooks project. And to Hadley Wickham, Stefan Milton Bache, and others who have had made tools for sequential and incremental workflows in data manipulation and analysis.
There would also be no flipbooks without the luminaries and helpful hackers Emi Tanaka and Garrick Aden-Buie, whose insights and efforts were critical in getting the “flipbooks” project off the ground. Three cheers for Emi and Garrick!