What is the dot (".") notation in R?

Question

I want to group the tidyr dataset relig_income by religion, show the mean of the believers by N_People and order them DESC through the mean. I tried the first code but according to my online-course, the correct answer appears to be the second. What does the dot, in the function of arrange, means?

I am getting two different results.

My Code:

tidy_df %>% group_by(religion) %>% summarise(mean_believers = mean(N_People)) %>% arrange(mean_believers, desc(mean_believers))
Correct Answer:

tidy_df %>% group_by(religion) %>% summarise(mean_believers = mean(N_People)) %>% arrange(., desc(mean_believers))

Cool, I understand now! Thank you for the reply and for the documentation. — newbie_coder, Nov 06 '20 at 11:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '20 at 10:35

0

The . is the notation for the data passed through %>%. For example, you can reference specific columns of the data with .$your_column

Take a look at the documentation for pipe

answered Nov 06 '20 at 10:35

mhovd

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I see now. The dot is equal to the dataset (in this case tidy_df). I was using the arrange function wrongly. – newbie_coder Nov 06 '20 at 11:38

What is the dot (".") notation in R?

1 Answers1