Perspective on Base R and Tidyverse by Stephen

Abstract:

There are now 2 distinct dialects of the R programming language in the wild. The first and original dialect is typically referred to as "base R", which derives from the base R package that comes pre-loaded as part of the standard R installation. The second, is known as the "tidyverse" (or affectionately "Hadleyverse") was largely developed by Hadley Wickham, one of R's most prolific R package contributors. The tidyverse is an 'opinionated' collection of R packages that duplicate and seek to improve upon numerous base R functions for data manipulation (e.g. dplyr) and graphing (e.g. ggplot2). As the tidyverse has grown increasing more comprehensive, it has been suggested that it be taught first to new R users. The debate between which R dialect is better has generated a lot of heat, but much light. This talk will review the similarities (with numerous examples) between the 2 dialects and hopefully help give new and old R users some perspective.

Directions:

We will be in Schafer Rooms (A, B, C). You can come to the main entrance of St. Vincent on 86th street. Once you enter the entrance, come to the basement and follow signs for the cafeteria. The Schafer rooms are opposite the cafeteria.