Data science case study an analysis in R, using a variety of packages for web scraping and processing non-tidy data into tidy data frames

Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel

November 17, 2017

The observation that “La Quinta is Spanish for ‘next to Denny’s’” is a joke made famous by the late comedian Mitch Hedberg. John Reiser, on his new jersey geographer blog, wrote up an analysis of this joke using data scraped from the respective websites of Denny’s (a diner chain) and La Quinta Inns and Suites (a hotel chain). In this case study we use Reiser’s work as inspiration for conducting a similar analysis in R, using a variety of packages for web scraping and processing non-tidy data into tidy data frames to be used in geospatial analysis.

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About the speaker

Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel

Professional Educator and Data Scientist

Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel is Professional Educator and Data Scientist at RStudio as well as Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics at University of Edinburgh (on leave from Department of Statistical Science at Duke University). Mine’s work focuses on innovation in statistics and data science pedagogy, with an emphasis on computing, reproducible research, student-centered learning, and open-source education as well as pedagogical approaches for enhancing retention of women and under-represented minorities in STEM. Mine works on integrating computation into the undergraduate statistics curriculum, using reproducible research methodologies and analysis of real and complex datasets. She also organizes ASA DataFest and works on the OpenIntro project. She is also the creator and maintainer of datasciencebox.org and she teaches the popular Statistics with R MOOC on Coursera.