# Is there a 'tidy data' package out there?

**URL:** <https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/is-there-a-tidy-data-package-out-there/2599>\
**Category:** Learn\
**Created:** [November 23, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/is-there-a-tidy-data-package-out-there/2599 "2018-11-23T17:02:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jwoLondon](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/jwolondon/32/605_2.png) [@jwoLondon](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/jwoLondon)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/is-there-a-tidy-data-package-out-there/2599/1 "2018-11-23T17:02:50Z")

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Is anyone aware of an Elm package for tidying data? For those unfamiliar with the concept, it is a convention for organising data tables that separates _variables_ into columns and _observations_ into rows. For example this ‘messy’ table

| site | temperature2017 | temperature2018 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Bristol** | 12 | 14 |
| **Sheffield** | 11 | 13 |
| **Glasgow** | 8 | 9 |

can be converted into the following ‘tidy’ table:

| site | year | temperature |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Bristol | 2017 | 12 |
| Bristol | 2018 | 14 |
| Sheffield | 2017 | 11 |
| Sheffield | 2018 | 13 |
| Glasgow | 2017 | 8 |
| Glasgow | 2018 | 9 |

(For details, see [Wickham 2014](https://www.jstatsoft.org/index.php/jss/article/view/v059i10/v59i10.pdf))

I have started writing functions to do the necessary transformations, but didn’t want to do too much wheel reinventing if a package already exists. Searching the package server with some likely keywords doesn’t yield anything obvious to me.

If not, I will continue to work on this and publish as a package.

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**Author:** ![hinkelman](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/hinkelman/32/1413_2.png) [@hinkelman](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/hinkelman)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2018, 11:06pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/is-there-a-tidy-data-package-out-there/2599/2 "2018-11-23T23:06:24Z")

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I’m interested in hearing more about your work on tidy data in Elm. I’m very new to Elm (only a few chapters into the official guide) and my primary programming experience is in R. I expect that familiar concepts (like tidy data) will make learning Elm a bit easier for me.

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**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/elm_lang/original/1X/50a05e53677a2c3b47776d7abd0f113eb50193a1.png) [@system](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 11:06pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/is-there-a-tidy-data-package-out-there/2599/3 "2018-12-03T23:06:26Z")

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