10.12 Drop Obs with Missing Values

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Dropping any rows (observations) with missing values is sometimes useful if there are not too many rows to remove. If the number of rows with missing values is quite small compared to the size of the dataset then generally this transformation will have little impact on the variable distributions.

See Section 10.22 to replace missing values with an imputed (or guessed at) values, and Section 10.27 to replace missing values within a dataset with a nominated value.

To drop rows in a dataset that contain a missing value (NA) we can use tidyr::drop_na(). This can also be used within a pipeline.

Within Rattle we achieve the same through the Transform tab’s Cleanup feature which has a Delete Obs with Missing option.

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