Summary

In this chapter, we learned about the basics of managing data in R. We started by taking an in-depth look at the structures used for storing various types of data. The foundational R data structure is the vector, which is extended and combined into more complex data types such as lists and data frames. The data frame is an R data structure that corresponds to the notion of a dataset, having both features and examples. R provides functions for reading and writing data frames to spreadsheet-like tabular data files.

We then explored a real-world dataset containing data on used car prices. We examined numeric variables using common summary statistics of center and spread, and visualized relationships between prices and odometer readings with a scatterplot. We examined nominal variables using tables. In examining the used car data, we followed an exploratory process that can be used to understand any dataset. These skills will be required for the other projects throughout this book.

Now...