2.1 Repeated Measures Series

Big thanks to Ananda Mahto for suggesting better handing of repeated measures series and providing concise code to extend this capability. The user may now specify the same variable function multiple times and it is named appropriately:

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(
    n = 500,
    id,
    age, age, age,
    grade, grade, grade
)
## Source: local data frame [500 x 7]
## 
##     ID Age_1 Age_2 Age_3 Grade_1 Grade_2 Grade_3
## 1  001    28    33    32    80.2    87.2    85.6
## 2  002    24    35    31    89.7    91.7    86.8
## 3  003    26    33    23    92.7    85.7    88.7
## 4  004    31    24    28    82.2    90.0    86.0
## 5  005    21    21    29    86.5    87.0    88.4
## 6  006    23    28    25    85.6    93.5    86.7
## 7  007    24    22    26    89.3    90.3    87.6
## 8  008    24    21    23    92.4    88.3    89.3
## 9  009    29    23    32    86.4    84.4    88.2
## 10 010    26    34    32    97.6    84.2    90.6
## .. ...   ...   ...   ...     ...     ...     ...

But he went further, recommending a short hand for variable, variable, variable. The r_series function takes a variable function and j number of columns. It can also be renamed with the name argument:

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(n=100,
    id,
    age,
    sex,
    r_series(gpa, 2),
    r_series(likert, 3, name = "Question")
)
## Source: local data frame [100 x 8]
## 
##     ID Age    Sex GPA_1 GPA_2        Question_1        Question_2
## 1  001  28   Male  3.00  4.00 Strongly Disagree   Strongly Agree 
## 2  002  24   Male  3.67  3.67          Disagree           Neutral
## 3  003  26   Male  3.00  4.00          Disagree Strongly Disagree
## 4  004  31   Male  3.67  3.67           Neutral   Strongly Agree 
## 5  005  21 Female  3.00  3.00             Agree   Strongly Agree 
## 6  006  23 Female  3.67  3.67             Agree             Agree
## 7  007  24 Female  3.67  4.00          Disagree Strongly Disagree
## 8  008  24   Male  2.67  3.00   Strongly Agree            Neutral
## 9  009  29 Female  4.00  3.33           Neutral Strongly Disagree
## 10 010  26   Male  4.00  3.00          Disagree Strongly Disagree
## .. ... ...    ...   ...   ...               ...               ...
## Variables not shown: Question_3 (fctr)

2.2 Dummy Coding Expansion of Factors

It is sometimes nice to expand a factor into j (number of groups) dummy coded columns. Here we see a factor version and then a dummy coded version of the same data frame:

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(n=100,
    id,
    age,
    sex,
    political
)
## Source: local data frame [100 x 4]
## 
##     ID Age    Sex    Political
## 1  001  28   Male Constitution
## 2  002  24   Male Constitution
## 3  003  26   Male     Democrat
## 4  004  31   Male     Democrat
## 5  005  21 Female Constitution
## 6  006  23 Female     Democrat
## 7  007  24 Female     Democrat
## 8  008  24   Male   Republican
## 9  009  29 Female Constitution
## 10 010  26   Male     Democrat
## .. ... ...    ...          ...

The dummy coded version…

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(n=100,
    id,
    age,
    r_dummy(sex, prefix = TRUE),
    r_dummy(political)
)
## Source: local data frame [100 x 9]
## 
##     ID Age Sex_Male Sex_Female Constitution Democrat Green Libertarian
## 1  001  28        1          0            1        0     0           0
## 2  002  24        1          0            1        0     0           0
## 3  003  26        1          0            0        1     0           0
## 4  004  31        1          0            0        1     0           0
## 5  005  21        0          1            1        0     0           0
## 6  006  23        0          1            0        1     0           0
## 7  007  24        0          1            0        1     0           0
## 8  008  24        1          0            0        0     0           0
## 9  009  29        0          1            1        0     0           0
## 10 010  26        1          0            0        1     0           0
## .. ... ...      ...        ...          ...      ...   ...         ...
## Variables not shown: Republican (int)

2.3 Factor to Numeric Conversion

There are times when you feel like a factor and the when you feel like an integer version. This is particularly useful with Likert-type data and other ordered factors. The as_integer function takes a data.frame and allows the user t specify the indices (j) to convert from factor to numeric. Here I show a factor data.frame and then the integer conversion:

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(5,
    id, 
    r_series(likert, j = 4, name = "Item")
)
## Source: local data frame [5 x 5]
## 
##   ID          Item_1   Item_2          Item_3            Item_4
## 1  1         Neutral    Agree        Disagree           Neutral
## 2  2           Agree    Agree         Neutral   Strongly Agree 
## 3  3         Neutral    Agree Strongly Agree              Agree
## 4  4        Disagree Disagree         Neutral             Agree
## 5  5 Strongly Agree   Neutral           Agree Strongly Disagree

As integers…

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(5,
    id, 
    r_series(likert, j = 4, name = "Item")
) %>% 
    as_integer(-1)
## Source: local data frame [5 x 5]
## 
##   ID Item_1 Item_2 Item_3 Item_4
## 1  1      3      4      2      3
## 2  2      4      4      3      5
## 3  3      3      4      5      4
## 4  4      2      2      3      4
## 5  5      5      3      4      1

2.4 Viewing Whole Data Set

dplyr has a nice print method that hides excessive rows and columns. Typically this is great behavior. Sometimes you want to quickly see the whole width of the data set. We can use View but this is still wide and shows all columns. The peek function shows minimal rows, truncated columns, and prints wide for quick inspection. This is particularly nice for text strings as data. dplyr prints wide data sets like this:

r_data_frame(100,
    id, 
    name,
    sex,
    sentence    
)
## Source: local data frame [100 x 4]
## 
##     ID     Name    Sex
## 1  001   Gerald   Male
## 2  002    Jason   Male
## 3  003 Mitchell   Male
## 4  004      Joe Female
## 5  005   Mickey   Male
## 6  006   Michal   Male
## 7  007   Dannie Female
## 8  008   Jordan   Male
## 9  009     Rudy Female
## 10 010   Sammie Female
## .. ...      ...    ...
## Variables not shown: Sentence (chr)

Now use peek:

r_data_frame(100,
    id, 
    name,
    sex,
    sentence    
) %>% peek
## Source: local data frame [100 x 4]
## 
##     ID    Name    Sex   Sentence
## 1  001     Jae Female Excuse me.
## 2  002 Darnell Female Over the l
## 3  003  Elisha Female First of a
## 4  004  Vernon Female Gentlemen,
## 5  005   Scott   Male That's wha
## 6  006   Kasey Female We don't h
## 7  007 Michael   Male You don't 
## 8  008   Cecil Female I'll get o
## 9  009    Cruz Female They must 
## 10 010  Travis Female Good night
## .. ...     ...    ...        ...

2.5 Visualizing Column Types and NAs

When we build a large random data set it is nice to get a sense of the column types and the missing values. The table_heat (also plot for tbl_df class) does this. Here I’ll generate a data set, add missing values (r_na), and then plot:

set.seed(10)

r_data_frame(n=100,
    id,
    dob,
    animal,
    grade, grade,
    death,
    dummy,
    grade_letter,
    gender,
    paragraph,
    sentence
) %>%
   r_na() %>%
   plot(palette = "Set1")

4.1 Testing Methods

I personally will use this most frequently when I’m testing out a model. For example say you wanted to test psychometric functions, including the cor function, on a randomly generated assessment:

dat <- r_data_frame(120,
    id, 
    sex,
    age,
    r_series(likert, 15, name = "Item")
) %>% 
    as_integer(-c(1:3))

dat %>%
    select(contains("Item")) %>%
    cor %>%
    heatmap</code>

4.2 Unique Student Data for Course Assignments

Sometimes it’s nice if students each have their own data set to work with but one in which you control the parameters. Simply supply the students with a unique integer id and they can use this inside of set.seed with a wakefield r_data_frame you’ve constructed for them in advance. Viola 25 instant data sets that are structurally the same but randomly different.

1student_id <- ## INSERT YOUT ID HERE set.seed(student_id) dat <- function(1000, id, gender, religion, internet_browser, language, iq, sat, smokes )

4.3 Blogging and Online Help Communities

wakefield can make data sharing on blog posts and online hep communities (e.g., TalkStats, StackOverflow) fast, accessible, and with little space or cognitive effort. Use variables(TRUE) to see variable functions by class and select the ones you want:

variables(TRUE)
## $character
## [1] "lorem_ipsum" "lower"       "name"        "paragraph"   "sentence"   
## [6] "string"      "upper"       "zip_code"   
## 
## $date
## [1] "birth"      "date_stamp" "dob"       
## 
## $factor
##  [1] "animal"           "answer"           "area"            
##  [4] "car"              "coin"             "color"           
##  [7] "dna"              "education"        "employment"      
## [10] "eye"              "gender"           "grade_level"     
## [13] "group"            "hair"             "internet_browser"
## [16] "language"         "lower_factor"     "marital"         
## [19] "military"         "month"            "pet"             
## [22] "political"        "primary"          "race"            
## [25] "religion"         "sex"              "state"           
## [28] "upper_factor"    
## 
## $integer
## [1] "age"      "children" "dice"     "level"    "year"    
## 
## $logical
## [1] "death"  "died"   "smokes" "valid" 
## 
## $numeric
##  [1] "dummy"        "gpa"          "grade"        "height"      
##  [5] "height_cm"    "height_in"    "income"       "iq"          
##  [9] "normal"       "normal_round" "sat"          "speed"       
## [13] "speed_kph"    "speed_mph"   
## 
## $`ordered factor`
## [1] "grade_letter" "likert"       "likert_5"     "likert_7"

Then throw the inside of r_data_fame to make a quick data set to share.

r_data_frame(8,
    name,
    sex,
    r_series(iq, 3)
) %>%
    peek %>%
    dput