4 ms·

Tidyverse is more than dplyr. It also includes libraries like ggplot2, for which there really is no peer. Also stringr, for string manipulation, tidyr, which ha

Tidyverse is more than dplyr. It also includes libraries like ggplot2, for which there really is no peer. Also stringr, for string manipulation, tidyr, which has a wide variety of very useful utility functions for working with data. dplyr is simply the backbone that connects them all and allows you to move between them without switching thought processes. dplyr also offers functionality that many don't realize beyond its basic data manipulation. tibbles allow for arbitrary data types for columns, meaning you can have data frames containing your typical strings or floats, but you can also have data frames with columns consisting of nested data frames, or fitted models, or other atypical objects. Once you start working in this way, it can really streamline a lot of complex analytical processes, make your code much cleaner and easier to work with, and allows you to integrate them directly into other tidyverse packages, like ggplot2. > If I want to use an advanced data manipulation library, I'd typically reach for data.table Data.table is powerful, but from a usability/readability perspective, most people find it inferior to dplyr. And there are now packages for using the dplyr API and having it run data.table on the backend, so I personally see little to no use for using data.table by itself anymore. > If I want to use a verb based approach, why not SQL rather than dplyr. This seems like an overly simplistic reduction. There are bigger differences between dplyr and SQL than both being a verb based approach. And even were there not, dplyr is directly integrated within R. It is still much easier to do your data manipulation directly in R and handing it back and forth between dplyr and whatever other libraries you are using, than it is to do the same in SQL (even utilizing SQL queries within R). The beauty of the tidyverse is that it is unifying the most important aspects of the data science process under a single approach and API philosophy. It integrates in a way that is pretty unprecedented not just in R, but in any programming language (where data analysis tasks are concerned).

phillc73 6y ago
I don't want to say that the Tidyverse is inferior, because it's not and it works for a lot of people. Hadley will also know much more about R and always be a better programmer than me. However, there are other tools which predate Tidyverse, which I think so a stellar job at their core competency. ggplot2 is great, but it was also around long before the Tidyverse concept. But at the same time base R plot() can also be pretty powerful[1] and look great.[2] As an alternative to ggplot2 I would also propose that Vega Lite[3] could be a contender, with an excellent cross language ecosystem. There are also libraries available for applying SQL on dataframes from directly within R if that's what you want to do. sqldf[4] has been around for a long time, and now there is also the new duckdf[5], which is a bit quicker. Or one can use the DBI[6] library, which requires a bit more coding. Learning SQL is also a great skill which has a lot of value outside R. Tidyverse may be useful, helpful and convenient for a lot of people, but I think we shouldn't lose sight of the wide R ecosystem which has provided a lot of alternative packages for a long time, perhaps without the marketing and profile of RStudio and the Tidyverse. [1] http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/r_base_plotting_without_wrappers/ http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/r_base_plotting_without_... [2] https://github.com/KKPMW/basetheme https://github.com/KKPMW/basetheme [3] https://vegawidget.github.io/vlbuildr/ https://vegawidget.github.io/vlbuildr/ [4] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sqldf/index.html https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sqldf/index.html [5] https://github.com/phillc73/duckdf https://github.com/phillc73/duckdf [6] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DBI/index.html https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DBI/index.html
lottin 6y ago
> includes libraries like ggplot2, for which there really is no peer lattice is largely ignored but it is quite similar to ggplot2 in terms of features, and (as a matter of opinion) the plots it produces are aesthetically more pleasing, also great for making subplots using conditioning variables

phillc73 6y ago

I don't want to say that the Tidyverse is inferior, because it's not and it works for a lot of people. Hadley will also know much more about R and always be a better programmer than me. However, there are other tools which predate Tidyverse, which I think so a stellar job at their core competency. ggplot2 is great, but it was also around long before the Tidyverse concept. But at the same time base R plot() can also be pretty powerful[1] and look great.[2] As an alternative to ggplot2 I would also propose that Vega Lite[3] could be a contender, with an excellent cross language ecosystem. There are also libraries available for applying SQL on dataframes from directly within R if that's what you want to do. sqldf[4] has been around for a long time, and now there is also the new duckdf[5], which is a bit quicker. Or one can use the DBI[6] library, which requires a bit more coding. Learning SQL is also a great skill which has a lot of value outside R. Tidyverse may be useful, helpful and convenient for a lot of people, but I think we shouldn't lose sight of the wide R ecosystem which has provided a lot of alternative packages for a long time, perhaps without the marketing and profile of RStudio and the Tidyverse. [1] http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/r_base_plotting_without_wrappers/ http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/r_base_plotting_without_... [2] https://github.com/KKPMW/basetheme https://github.com/KKPMW/basetheme [3] https://vegawidget.github.io/vlbuildr/ https://vegawidget.github.io/vlbuildr/ [4] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sqldf/index.html https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sqldf/index.html [5] https://github.com/phillc73/duckdf https://github.com/phillc73/duckdf [6] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DBI/index.html https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DBI/index.html

lottin 6y ago

> includes libraries like ggplot2, for which there really is no peer lattice is largely ignored but it is quite similar to ggplot2 in terms of features, and (as a matter of opinion) the plots it produces are aesthetically more pleasing, also great for making subplots using conditioning variables