Learn R

There are 3 options for Data Management in R

• Base R - Built in to R, and was the only option for a while. Many older tutorials use it. 
  • Some parts are useful for everyone to know, such as:
    • If you see brackets, it refers to part of an object: mydata[rows,columns]
    • For data tables, you can use the $ to access a variable: mydata$variable
• data.table – If you need/want the following, this may be a good option for you.
  • Uses a shorthand notation for less typing: mydata[rows, columns, by] 
    • Example (changes values to "VA"):  mydata[state == "Virginia", state := "VA"]
  • Faster for work with Big Data (> 1 million records). (comparison with dplyr)
    • Learn to work with large dataset in R by Analytics Vidhya
• dplyr / tidyr (tidyverse) - Most popular, our recommended choice. Written by Hadley Wickham (RStudio/Posit)
  • Uses words instead of notation
    • mydata |> filter(rows) |> select(columns)
  • Always has the dataset as the first argument, enabling the use of the Pipe
    • You might also see %>% instead of |>

If you really can't decide, check out this comparison.