Week 9: Import and Tidy Data

Today’s Question

How do we turn a messy file into data ready for analysis?

Tidy Data

• Each variable is a column.
• Each observation is a row.
• Each value is a cell.

Import Checklist

• Are column names meaningful?
• Are types correct?
• Are missing values encoded consistently?
• Is one row one observation?

From MATLAB Data to R Data

The same habits used in the MATLAB project still matter:

• know what one row represents;
• check types, units, and missing values;
• generate results through code;
• verify before interpreting.

AI Check

Ask for a tidy structure, then decide whether the proposed structure matches the scientific meaning of the data.