Unit 2

In this second unit, we will dig deeper into the ideas surrounding efficiency. We will start with a review of writing functions in R—creating both vector and data frame functions and learning how to write functions which incorporate “tidy evaluation.” Next, we will take these functions to the next step by considering the efficiency of the function—how many intermediate objects are created, what order are operations run, what functions are used internally? Alongside these considerations, we will also compare and contrast different methods for iterating over functions—for loops and the purrr family of functions. From the perspective of efficiency, we will consider why one would choose one tool over the other.

After this review of efficiency, we will put our function writing an iteration to work! First we will explore hierarchical (JSON) data, iterating over multiple calls to an API. Next, we will explore extracting (scraping) data from a webpage, iterating over multiple webpages. Finally, we will use iteration to generate art from code.