04-rmarkdown.Rmd

---
layout: topic
title: Reproducible reports with R Markdown
minutes: 60
---

```{r, echo=FALSE, purl=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(fig.keep='last')
```

```{r setup, echo=FALSE, purl=FALSE}
source("setup.R")
```

> ### Learning Objectives {.objectives}
>
> * Value of reproducible reports
> * Basics of Markdown
> * R code chunks
> * Chunk options
> * Inline R code
> * Other output formats


### Data analysis reports

Data analysts tend to write a lot of reports, describing their
analyses and results, for their collaborators or to document their
work for future reference.

When I was first starting out, I'd write an R script with all of my
work, and would just send an email to my collaborator, describing the
results and attaching various graphs. In discussing the results, there
would often be confusion about which graph was which.

I moved to writing formal reports, with Word or LaTeX, but I'd have to
spend a lot of time getting the figures to look right. Mostly, the
concern is about page breaks.

Everything is easier now that I create a web page (as an html
file). It can be one long stream, so I can use tall figures that
wouldn't ordinary fit on one page. Scrolling is your friend.


### Literate programming

Ideally, such analysis reports are _reproducible_ documents: If an
error is discovered, or if some additional subjects are added to the
data, you can just re-compile the report and get the new or corrected
results (versus having to reconstruct figures, paste them into
a Word document, and further hand-edit various detailed results).

The key tool for R is [knitr](http://yihui.name/knitr/), which allows
you to create a document that is a mixture of text and some chunks of
code. When the document is processed by knitr, chunks of R code will
be executed, and graphs or other results inserted.

This sort of idea has been called "literate programming".

knitr allows you to mix basically any sort of text with any sort of
code, but we recommend that you use R Markdown, which mixes Markdown
with R. Markdown is a light-weight mark-up language for creating web
pages.


### Creating an R Markdown file

Within R Studio, click File → New File → R Markdown and
you'll get a dialog box like this:

![R Markdown dialog box](img/New_R_Markdown.png)<br/>

You can stick with the default (HTML output), but give it a title.


### Basic components of R Markdown

The initial chunk of text contains instructions for R: you give the
thing a title, author, and date, and tell it that you're going to want
to produce html output (in other words, a web page).

```
---
title: "Initial R Markdown document"
author: "Karl Broman"
date: "April 23, 2015"
output: html_document
---
```

You can delete any of those fields if you don't want them
included. The double-quotes aren't strictly _necessary_ in this case.
They're mostly needed if you want to include a colon in the title.

RStudio creates the document with some example text to get you
started. Note below that there are chunks like

<pre>
&#96;&#96;&#96;{r}
summary(cars)
&#96;&#96;&#96;
</pre>

These are chunks of R code that will be executed by knitr and replaced
by their results. More on this later.

Also note the web address that's put between angle brackets (`< >`) as
well as the double-asterisks in `**Knit**`. This is
[Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax).

### Markdown

Markdown is a system for writing web pages by marking up the text much
as you would in an email rather than writing html code. The marked-up
text gets _converted_ to html, replacing the marks with the proper
html code.

For now, let's delete all of the stuff that's there and write a bit of
markdown.

You make things **bold** using two asterisks, like this: `**bold**`,
and you make things _italics_ by using underscores, like this:
`_italics_`.

You can make a bulleted list by writing a list with hyphens or
asterisks, like this:

```
* bold with double-asterisks
* italics with underscores
* code-type font with backticks
```

or like this:

```
- bold with double-asterisks
- italics with underscores
- code-type font with backticks
```

Each will appear as:

- bold with double-asterisks
- italics with underscores
- code-type font with backticks

(I prefer hyphens over asterisks, myself.)

You can make a numbered list by just using numbers. You can use the
same number over and over if you want:

```
1. bold with double-asterisks
1. italics with underscores
1. code-type font with backticks
```

This will appear as:

1. bold with double-asterisks
1. italics with underscores
1. code-type font with backticks

You can make section headers of different sizes by initiating a line
with some number of `#` symbols:

```
# Title
## Main section
### Sub-section
#### Sub-sub section
```

You _compile_ the R Markdown document to an html webpage by clicking
the "Knit HTML" in the upper-left. And note the little question mark
next to it; click the question mark and you'll get a "Markdown Quick
Reference" (with the Markdown syntax) as well to the RStudio
documentation on R Markdown.

### Challenge

- Create a new R Markdown document.
- Delete all of the R code chunks and write a bit of Markdown (some sections, some italicized
text, and an itemized list).
- Convert the document to a webpage.

<!-- end challenge -->

### A bit more Markdown

You can make a hyperlink like this:
`[text to show](http://the-web-page.com)`.

You can include an image file like this: `![caption](http://url/for/file)`

You can do subscripts (e.g., F~2~) with `F~2~` and superscripts (e.g.,
F^2^) with `F^2^`.

If you know how to write equations in
[LaTeX](http://www.latex-project.org/), you'll be glad to know that
you can use `$ $` and `$$ $$` to insert math equations, like
`$E = mc^2$` and

```
$$y = \mu + \sum_{i=1}^p \beta_i x_i + \epsilon$$
```



### R code chunks

Markdown is interesting and useful, but the real power comes from
mixing markdown with chunks of R code. This is R Markdown. When
processed, the R code will be executed; if they produce figures, the
figures will be inserted in the final document.

The main code chunks look like this:

<pre>
&#96;&#96;&#96;{r load_data}
reduced <- read.csv("CleanData/portal_data_reduced.csv")
&#96;&#96;&#96;
</pre>

That is, you place a chunk of R code between <code>&#96;&#96;&#96;{r chunk_name}</code>
and <code>&#96;&#96;&#96;</code>. It's a good idea to give each chunk
a name, as they will help you to fix errors and, if any graphs are
produced, the file names are based on the name of the code chunk that
produced them.

### Challenge

Add code chunks to

- Load the ggplot2 package
- Read the portal data
- Create a plot

<!-- end challenge -->



### How things get compiled

When you press the "Knit HTML" button, the R Markdown document is
processed by [knitr](http://yihui.name/knitr) and a plain Markdown
document is produced (as well as, potentially, a set of figure files): the R code is executed
and replaced by both the input and the output; if figures are
produced, links to those figures are included.

The Markdown and figure documents are then processed by the tool
[pandoc](http://pandoc.org/), which converts the Markdown file into an
html file, with the figures embedded.

```{r rmd_to_html_fig, fig.width=8, fig.height=3, fig.align="left", echo=FALSE}
par(mar=rep(0, 4), bty="n", cex=1.5)
plot(0, 0, type="n", xlab="", ylab="", xaxt="n", yaxt="n",
     xlim=c(0, 100), ylim=c(0, 100))
xw <- 10
yh <- 35
xm <- 12
ym <- 50
rect(xm-xw/2, ym-yh/2, xm+xw/2, ym+yh/2, lwd=2)
text(xm, ym, ".Rmd")

xm <- 50
ym <- 80
rect(xm-xw/2, ym-yh/2, xm+xw/2, ym+yh/2, lwd=2)
text(xm, ym, ".md")
xm <- 50; ym <- 25
for(i in c(2, 0, -2))
    rect(xm-xw/2+i, ym-yh/2+i, xm+xw/2+i, ym+yh/2+i, lwd=2,
         border="black", col="white")
text(xm-2, ym-2, "figs/")

xm <- 100-12
ym <- 50
rect(xm-xw/2, ym-yh/2, xm+xw/2, ym+yh/2, lwd=2)
text(xm, ym, ".html")

arrows(22, 50, 38, 50, lwd=2, col="slateblue", len=0.1)
text((22+38)/2, 60, "knitr", col="darkslateblue", cex=1.3)

arrows(62, 50, 78, 50, lwd=2, col="slateblue", len=0.1)
text((62+78)/2, 60, "pandoc", col="darkslateblue", cex=1.3)
```




### Chunk options

There are a variety of options to affect how the code chunks are
treated.

- Use `echo=FALSE` to avoid having the code itself shown.
- Use `results="hide"` to avoid having any results printed.
- Use `eval=FALSE` to have the code shown but not evaluated.
- Use `warning=FALSE` and `message=FALSE` to hide any warnings or
  messages produced.
- Use `fig.height` and `fig.width` to control the size of the figures
  produced (in inches).

So you might write:

<pre>
&#96;&#96;&#96;{r load_libraries, echo=FALSE, message=FALSE}
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
&#96;&#96;&#96;
</pre>

Often there'll be particular options that you'll want to use
repeatedly; for this, you can set _global_ chunk options, like so:

<pre>
&#96;&#96;&#96;{r global_options, echo=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(fig.path="Figs/", message=FALSE, warning=FALSE,
                      echo=FALSE, results="hide", fig.width=11)
&#96;&#96;&#96;
</pre>

The `fig.path` option defines where the figures will be saved. The `/`
here is really important; without it, the figures would be saved in
the standard place but just with names that being with `Figs`.

If you have multiple R Markdown files in a common directory, you might
want to use `fig.path` to define separate prefixes for the figure file
names, like `fig.path="Figs/cleaning-"` and `fig.path="Figs/analysis-"`.


### Challenge

Use chunk options to control the size of a figure and to hide the
code.

<!-- end challenge -->


### Inline R code

You can make _every_ number in your report reproducible. Use
<code>&#96;r</code> and <code>&#96;</code> for an in-line code chunk,
like so: <code>&#96;r round(some_value, 2)&#96;</code>. The code will be
executed and replaced with the _value_ of the result.

Don't let these in-line chunks get split across lines.

Perhaps precede the paragraph with a larger code chunk that does
calculations and defines things, with `include=FALSE` for that larger
chunk (which is the same as `echo=FALSE` and `results="hide"`).

I'm very particular about rounding in such situations. I may want
`2.0`, but `round(2.03, 1)` will give just `2`.

The
[`myround`](https://github.com/kbroman/broman/blob/master/R/myround.R)
function in my [R/broman](https://github.com/kbroman/broman) package handles
this.

### Challenge

Try out a bit of in-line R code.

<!-- end challenge -->


### Other output options

You can also convert R Markdown to a PDF or a Word document. Click the
little triangle next to the "Knit HTML" button to get a drop-down
menu. Or you could put `pdf_document` or `word_document` in the header
of the file.

Actually, that drop-down menu seems to just change what's
shown in the header at the top of the file!


### Resources

- [Knitr in a knutshell tutorial](http://kbroman.org/knitr_knutshell)
- [Dynamic Documents with R and knitr](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1482203537/7210-20) (book)
- [R Markdown documentation](http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com)
- [R Markdown cheat sheet](http://www.rstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/rmarkdown-cheatsheet.pdf)