Wide format
Wide format is a tabular layout in which each entity occupies a row and distinct measurements, variables, or attributes occupy separate columns.
Statistics Slam Dunk
Wide format is a tabular arrangement in which repeated measurements or categories are represented by separate columns.
- How it is used
- Prepares tabular measurements for summaries, visualizations, and subsequent analysis.
- How deep it goes
- Defines column-based organization and works through salary reshaping, but does not develop formal data-model theory.
- Examples
- Uses NBA salary-cap, real salary, inflation-adjusted salary, and playoff-classification columns across multiple seasons.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via dplyr and pivot_longer() to convert season columns into chart-ready long data.
The Well-Grounded Data Analyst
Wide data is a tabular representation in which each entity occupies a row and measurements or attributes occupy columns.
- How it is used
- Supports data-modeling decisions when organizing one row per entity and selecting columns for attributes or measurements.
- How deep it goes
- Defines row and column structure, contrasts long format, and shows how granularity affects analytical questions.
- Examples
- Uses football matches with teams, goals, and competitions, then reorganizes matches into participant-level rows.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate which table structure makes a stakeholder’s analytical question easier to answer.
Read how The Well-Grounded Data Analyst explains wide format →
Related concepts
- long dataalternative to · Long data is a tabular layout in which each row records one observation or measurement, with columns identifying variables, entities, or repeated-measurement contexts.
- pivot_wider() functionproduced by · The pivot_wider() function from tidyr reshapes long-format data into wide format by turning values of a variable into columns.
- research questionaddresses · A research question is a focused, answerable question that an investigation seeks to address using evidence.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.