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Writing Efficient R Code

Intermediate

4.2+

Updated 02/2025

Learn to write faster R code, discover benchmarking and profiling, and unlock the secrets of parallel programming.

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RProgramming4 hours14 videos43 exercises3,100 XP50,897Statement of Accomplishment

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Course Description

The beauty of R is that it is built for performing data analysis. The downside is that sometimes R can be slow, thereby obstructing our analysis. For this reason, it is essential to become familiar with the main techniques for speeding up your analysis, so you can reduce computational time and get insights as quickly as possible.

Prerequisites

1

The Art of Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Comparing read times of CSV and RDS files

Operational differences: "<-" and "="

Elapsed time

Relative time

How good is your machine?

DataCamp hardware

Benchmark DataCamp's machine

2

Fine Tuning: Efficient Base R

Memory allocation

Why is this piece of code slow?

Timings - growing a vector

Timings - pre-allocation

Importance of vectorizing your code

Vectorized code: multiplication

Vectorized code: calculating a log-sum

Data frames and matrices

Data frames vs. matrices

Data frames and matrices - column selection

Selecting a row in a data frame

Row timings

3

Diagnosing Problems: Code Profiling

What is code profiling

Profiling a function

Where's the hold-up?

Profvis in action

Profvis: Larger example

Change the data frame to a matrix

Calculating row sums

Use && instead of &

Monopoly overview

4

Turbo Charged Code: Parallel Programming

CPUs - why do we have more than one

How many cores does this machine have?

What sort of problems benefit from parallel computing?

Can this loop run in parallel (1)?

Can this loop run in parallel (2)?

The parallel package - parApply

Moving to parallel programming

Moving to parApply

The parallel package - parSapply

Using parSapply()

Timings parSapply()

You can write efficient R code!

Writing Efficient R Code

Course
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*4.2

from 29 reviews

62%

14%

17%

0%

7%

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Most recent
Top reviews

Byron C.

8 days

Me ayudó mucho!

Andrew V.

about 1 month

Great

Scott L.

about 1 year

Was good - easy to understand and concise.

Susan L.

over 1 year

this is an unusual type of course and very helpful, even for a data analyst sort

Evgeniia A.

over 1 year

A useful course for those who have ever thought about the speed of execution of their programmes

"Me ayudó mucho!"

Byron C.

"Great"

Andrew V.

"Was good - easy to understand and concise."

Scott L.

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