Toolbox

The toolbox contains a collection of nifty tips, tricks and hacks for anything R.

Keyboard shortcuts to make your life easier

Function Shortcut PC / Mac
Run current line Ctrl + Enter / Cmd + Return
Add <- Alt + - / Option + -
Add %>% Ctrl + Shift + M / Cmd + Shift + M
Show help F1
Options for auto-fill Tab
Create New Script Ctrl + Shift + N / Cmd + Shift + N
Comment out line Ctrl + Shift + C / Cmd + Shift + C
Save your script Ctrl + S / Cmd + S

Reading in Data

Data Source R command
WEXTOR (CSV) readr::read_delim("data.csv", delim = ";")
Excel (XLSX) xlsx::read.xlsx("data.xlsx", sheetIndex = 1)
R Data Source (RDS) readRDS("data.Rds")
SPSS (SAV) foreign::read.spss("data.sav")

Logic

Symbol Meaning
< smaller than
<= smaller or equal
> greater than
>= greater or equal
== equal to
!= unequal to
TRUE true (also written T)
FALSE false (also written F)
tidyselect::between(x, left, right) is x between the left and right value?
tidyselect::contains(match) selects columns whose names contain a word (to be used with dplyr::select())
& AND (both must be TRUE)
| OR (just one must be TRUE)
! NOT (as in != NOT equal)

Most important dplyr functions

  • select(): select certain columns by name
  • filter(): filter values from a column/variable
  • rename(): rename a variable
  • mutate(): change values of a column (new or existing)
  • %>%: "pipe" brings data from previous operation to the next (Shortcut: Strg + Shift + M)

Incomplete List of Useful Packages

Package Name General Purpose
psych Advanced statistical testing / modeling e.g. factor analysis
tibble Alternative for creating data frames
tidyr Clean up data & simple reshaping
dropR Dropout analysis (by experimental condition)
foreign Handling data from SPSS
corrplot Create correlation plots/ matrices