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Quick, have a look at your dataset

Wow, that is a lot of cars!

Working with large datasets is not uncommon in data analysis. When you work with (extremely) large datasets and data frames, your first task as a data analyst is to develop a clear understanding of its structure and main elements. Therefore, it is often useful to show only a small part of the entire dataset.

So how to do this in R? Well, the function head() enables you to show the first observations of a data frame. Similarly, the function tail() prints out the last observations in your dataset.

Both head() and tail() print a top line called the 'header', which contains the names of the different variables in your dataset.

This exercise is part of the course

Introduction to R

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Exercise instructions

Call head() on the mtcars dataset to have a look at the header and the first observations.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Call head() on mtcars
Edit and Run Code