AE 13: Debugging R code

Suggested answers

Application exercise
Answers
Modified

October 22, 2024

Packages

We will use the following packages in this application exercise.

  • tidyverse: For data import, wrangling, and visualization.
  • babynames: For working with the Social Security Administration’s baby names data.
library(tidyverse)
library(babynames)

Popular baby names

The Social Security Administration maintains detailed historic records on every child born in the United States dating back to 1880.1 The data is published annually at the national and state-levels, and includes every name excluding those with fewer than 5 occurrences. The babynames package provides a convenient interface to this data. 2

1 Source: SSN

2 The package is no longer actively maintained. We will use a forked version of the package which has been submitted as a pending pull request.

The instructor has written code to analyze the popularity of baby names in the United States. Alas, the code is not working correctly. Your task is to debug the code and fix any issues. Pay attention to any errors, warnings, or messages generated by the code. It is possible for the code to run without any notification from R, but still produce incorrect output.

Capture and solve a reprex

Your turn: Copy the reprex from the course discussion board. Turn this into clean code using reprex::reprex_clean() and add it to the code chunk below. Then debug the code, fix any issues, and post the corrected code on the discussion board using a reprex.

library(tidyverse)
library(babynames)

name_trend <- function(person_name) {
  babynames |>
    filter(name == person_name) |>
    ggplot(mapping = aes(x = year, y = n, color = sex)) +
    geom_line() +
    scale_color_brewer(type = "qual") +
    labs(
      title = str_glue("Name: {person_name}"),
      x = "Year",
      y = "Number of births",
      color = NULL
    ) +
    theme_minimal()
}

name_trend("Benjamin")
1
Put Name: {person_name} in parentheses