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R: The pivot_wider() function in R allows you to select multiple columns by specifying the names of the columns as arguments to the function. This can be done by providing a vector of column names or by using the select() helper function. You can also use the columns argument to specify which of the existing columns to keep in the output table. Once all the columns of interest have been specified, the pivot_wider() function will output a data frame with the selected columns in wide format.
The pivot_wider() function from the package in R can be used to pivot a data frame from a long format to a wide format.
If you’d like to use this function to pivot multiple columns, you can use the following syntax:
library(tidyr)
df_wide <- pivot_wider(df, names_from=group, values_from=c(values1, values2))
By providing multiple column names to the values_from argument, you can pivot multiple columns at once.
The following example shows how to use this function in practice.
Related:
Example: Use pivot_wider() with Multiple Columns in R
Suppose we have the following data frame in R that contains information about various basketball players:
#create data frame
df <- data.frame(team=c('A', 'A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'B'),
player=c('G', 'F', 'C', 'G', 'F', 'C'),
points=c(22, 34, 20, 15, 14, 19),
assists=c(4, 10, 12, 9, 8, 5))
#view data frame
df
team player points assists
1 A G 22 4
2 A F 34 10
3 A C 20 12
4 B G 15 9
5 B F 14 8
6 B C 19 5
Now suppose we would like to pivot the values in the points and assists columns at the same time.
We can use the following syntax to do so:
library(tidyr)
#pivot values in points and assists columns
df_wide <- pivot_wider(df, names_from=player, values_from=c(points, assists))
#view wide data frame
df_wide
# A tibble: 2 x 7
team points_G points_F points_C assists_G assists_F assists_C
1 A 22 34 20 4 10 12
2 B 15 14 19 9 8 5
Notice that each value in the player column has been combined with points and assists to create a total of six new columns that showed the points and assists scored by players in each position.
The final result is a wide data frame with a total of seven columns.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the pivot_wider() function .
The following tutorials explain how to use other common functions in the tidyr package in R: