Data exploration with modern R

Exploratory data analysis is the process of quickly looking at data, formulating hypotheses, and testing those hypotheses. In practice, two of the most important components of this process are transforming data and visualizing it. We transform data because it rarely comes in exactly the right format for our analysis. We visualize the data so that we can use our built-in pattern recognition systems —— our eyes —— to efficiently look for patterns. This tutorial will be a hands-on, practical introduction to using R for data exploration, with an emphasis on data transformation and visualization. I will focus on using modern R packages like ggplot2, dplyr, and tidyr for this tutorial.