pivot_wider() in {tidyverse}

Question

I have a project where I need to restructure my dataframes. I am using pivot_wider but I cannot produce what I need. I need more columns to appear in the output (nut_w). Happy to hire a tutor is familiar with data restructuring. Should I pursue with tidyverse or go back to base R? Thank you.

# nutrients

nut_w 

 pivot_wider(

  id_cols = c(Reference_ID, Date), # each row represents a unique station-date combination

  names_from = c(Functional_Group,Media,Fraction),

  values_from = Value

 )

Answer 1

Hi Dale. During my time at the National Institutes of Health I often used R and the tidyverse package to clean-up, restructure, and analyze data frames. Let me answer your last question first: I would definitely stick with tidyverse. It's an incredibly useful, albeit somewhat finicky tool.

As for your main question: when you transfer multiple columns to names_from, it creates a single column name from each of those values, typically separated by a delimiter. If you want each of the names_from columns to be individual columns rather than one column with compound names, I would recommend using the seperate_wider_position function after your pivot. Happy to connect with you if you still need guidance.

Francis