Long data
Long data is a tabular layout in which each row records one observation or measurement, with columns identifying variables, entities, or repeated-measurement contexts.
The Well-Grounded Data Analyst
Long data is a tabular representation in which each row records one measurement or entity-participation observation.
- How it is used
- Supports restructuring data for analytical questions, especially category comparisons and cross-tabulations.
- How deep it goes
- Defines long versus wide structure and demonstrates reshaping survey indicators into a long table before crosstabs and heatmaps.
- Examples
- Uses football matches with one row per participant and survey AI-use options grouped by favorability or trustworthiness.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via pandas to prepare category cross-tabs and heatmaps from repeated survey-option analyses.
Read how The Well-Grounded Data Analyst explains long data →
Statistics Slam Dunk
Long format is a tabular arrangement in which repeated measurements are represented as separate rows with variable-identifying columns.
- How it is used
- Supports data wrangling for analyses and visualizations that work better with one measurement per row.
- How deep it goes
- Explains reshaping through column selection, pivot_longer(), dimensions, and sample rows, without developing internals.
- Examples
- Uses NBA team win totals and postseason results across the 2008–2017 seasons.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via tidyr::pivot_longer() to produce analysis-ready team-and-season records.
Related concepts
- wide formatalternative to · Wide format is a tabular layout in which each entity occupies a row and distinct measurements, variables, or attributes occupy separate columns.
- pivot_longer() functionproduced by · The pivot_longer() function from tidyr reshapes tabular data from wide format into long format by gathering multiple columns into key-value columns.
- datakind of · Data is represented information, observations, measurements, or other values that can be stored, processed, transmitted, analyzed, or interpreted.
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