how to use pivot_wider() in R?

In data analysis, it’s common to encounter datasets that need reshaping to make them suitable for analysis or visualization. The tidyr package in R provides convenient functions for transforming your data. One such function is pivot_wider, which is used to convert data from long format to wide format.

what is wide and long format?

Long format:

| ID | Month | Value |
|----|-------|-------|
| 1  | Jan   | 10    |
| 1  | Feb   | 20    |
| 1  | Mar   | 30    |
| 2  | Jan   | 15    |
| 2  | Feb   | 25    |
| 2  | Mar   | 35    |

Wide format:

| ID | Jan | Feb | Mar |
|----|-----|-----|-----|
| 1  | 10  | 20  | 30  |
| 2  | 15  | 25  | 35  |

using pivot_wider()

Let’s use the following example data frame in wide format:

library(tidyverse)

data <- data.frame(ID = c(1, 2),
                   Jan = c(10, 15),
                   Feb = c(20, 25),
                   Mar = c(30, 35))

print(data)

  ID month value
1  1   Jan    10
2  1   Feb    20
3  1   Mar    30
4  2   Jan    15
5  2   Feb    25
6  2   Mar    35

Use pivot_wider() to transform the data. The function has several parameters, but the most crucial ones are:

• names_from: specifies the column to use for the new column names.
• values_from: specifies the column to use for the new column values.

wide_data <- long_data %>% 
  pivot_wider(names_from = month,
              values_from = value)

print(wider_data)

# A tibble: 2 × 4
     ID   Jan   Feb   Mar
  <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1     1    10    20    30
2     2    15    25    35