Data Analysis with R, Second Edition - Second Edition

Working with Popular R Packages

In this book thus far, we’ve used over 30 packages with functionalities ranging from data visualization to MCMC to connecting R to other languages. In this chapter, we will be focusing on a few very popular R packages that we haven't mentioned before, or that we only mentioned in passing. These packages—namely data.table, dplyr, and tidyr—are very widely used and revered in R circles.

These packages, which stress speed of computation and ease of use (at least after an initial learning curve) are essential components to many useRs' workflows. Note, however, that R was an extraordinarily effective and popular tool before these packages came on the scene and even if these packages were to somehow magically disappear ...