10.40 Reviewing Variable Names
The names of the variables within the dataset as supplied to us may
not be in any particular form and may use different conventions. For
example, they may use a mix of upper and lower case letters
(TempToday9AM) or be very long
(Temperature_Recorded_Today_9am) or use sequential numbers
to identify each variable (V004 or V004_rainToday)
or use codes (XVn34_rain) or any number of other
conventions. Often we prefer to simplify the variable names to ease
our processing and thinking and to enforce a standard and consistent
naming convention for ourselves.
We use base::names() to list the names of the variables within a dataset.
## [1] "date" "location" "min_temp" "max_temp"
## [5] "rainfall" "evaporation" "sunshine" "wind_gust_dir"
## [9] "wind_gust_speed" "wind_dir_9am" "wind_dir_3pm" "wind_speed_9am"
## [13] "wind_speed_3pm" "humidity_9am" "humidity_3pm" "pressure_9am"
## [17] "pressure_3pm" "cloud_9am" "cloud_3pm" "temp_9am"
## [21] "temp_3pm" "rain_today" "risk_mm" "rain_tomorrow"Notice that the names here use a scheme whereby the initial letter is capitalised and each word within the variable name is also capitalised. That’s a reasonable naming scheme and is preferred by some.
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