The arrange verb

The arrange verb

In the last video you learned the filter verb, for extracting a subset of your observations based on a condition.

Now you’ll learn the arrange verb.

Arrange sorts the observations in a dataset, in ascending or descending order based on one of its variables.

This is useful, for example, when you want to know the most extreme values in a dataset.

The arrange verb

Sorting with arrange

(music_top200
  >> arrange(_.duration)
)

	country	position	track_name	artist	streams	duration	continent
10868	Slovakia	69	Klop Klop	Karlo	17222	65.631	Europe
4586	Greece	187	FENDI	iLLEOo	16786	76.099	Europe
9937	Poland	138	Mistrz ping-ponga	PRO8L3M	145143	83.360	Europe
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
535	Australia	136	Innerbloom	RÜFÜS DU SOL	260092	578.041	Oceania
1302	Brazil	103	Poesia Acústica #8: Amor e Samba	Pineapple StormTv	839192	614.615	Americas
11557	Turkey	158	Susamam	Şanışer	194804	851.871	Asia

12400 rows × 7 columns

Just like filter, you use the arrange verb after the pipe operator.

You would type music, then the pipe operator (two greater than symbols) and then arrange. Within those parentheses, you tell it what column you want to arrange by.

The observations are now sorted in ascending order, with the lowest duration songs appearing first.

Look at the second to rightmost column: it starts with 65.631, the smallest value in the dataset, then keeps increasing. Looking at the track name column, this track is called Klop Klop, and is the shortest track in the data.

Just like with filter, the music object itself is unchanged: arrange is just giving you a new, sorted dataset.

arrange descending

(music_top200
  >> arrange(-_.duration)
)

	country	position	track_name	artist	streams	duration	continent
11557	Turkey	158	Susamam	Şanışer	194804	851.871	Asia
1302	Brazil	103	Poesia Acústica #8: Amor e Samba	Pineapple StormTv	839192	614.615	Americas
535	Australia	136	Innerbloom	RÜFÜS DU SOL	260092	578.041	Oceania
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
9937	Poland	138	Mistrz ping-ponga	PRO8L3M	145143	83.360	Europe
4586	Greece	187	FENDI	iLLEOo	16786	76.099	Europe
10868	Slovakia	69	Klop Klop	Karlo	17222	65.631	Europe

12400 rows × 7 columns

arrange also lets you sort in descending order. To do that, you’d put a negative sign next to the variable you’re sorting by.

This lets us see that the track with the longest duration is Susamam, which is a hit in at least Turkey. It’s almost 15 minutes long!

However, we might be interested in looking at duration within a specific country.

arrange and filter

(music_top200
  >> filter(_.country == "United States")
  >> arrange(-_.duration)
)

	country	position	track_name	artist	streams	duration	continent
7841	United States	42	After Hours	The Weeknd	3672033	361.027	Americas
7915	United States	116	Life Is Good (feat. Drake, DaBaby & Lil Baby) - Remix	Future	2181930	315.346	Americas
7923	United States	124	SICKO MODE	Travis Scott	2085268	312.820	Americas
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
7832	United States	33	Strawberry Peels (feat. Young Thug & Gunna)	Lil Uzi Vert	4007781	115.350	Americas
7853	United States	54	CITY OF ANGELS	24kGoldn	3443366	112.493	Americas
7971	United States	172	Skechers	DripReport	1731265	106.000	Americas

200 rows × 7 columns

Suppose you wanted to find the longest duration song in the United States.

To do that, you can combine the two verbs you’ve already learned: filter, and arrange.

arrange and filter

(music_top200
  >> filter(_.country == "United States")

)

	country	position	track_name	artist	streams	duration	continent
7800	United States	1	The Box	Roddy Ricch	12987027	196.653	Americas
7801	United States	2	Myron	Lil Uzi Vert	9163134	224.955	Americas
7802	United States	3	Blueberry Faygo	Lil Mosey	8043475	162.547	Americas
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
7997	United States	198	Lights Up	Harry Styles	1606234	172.227	Americas
7998	United States	199	Without Me	Halsey	1606153	201.661	Americas
7999	United States	200	Enemies (feat. DaBaby)	Post Malone	1597824	196.760	Americas

200 rows × 7 columns

Longest duration song in the United States.

You start with the music dataset, then a pipe to give the dataset to filter. Then you specify that you want to filter for country equals equals United States.

Then you use another pipe step.

arrange and filter

(music_top200
  >> filter(_.country == "United States")
  >> arrange(-_.duration)
)

	country	position	track_name	artist	streams	duration	continent
7841	United States	42	After Hours	The Weeknd	3672033	361.027	Americas
7915	United States	116	Life Is Good (feat. Drake, DaBaby & Lil Baby) - Remix	Future	2181930	315.346	Americas
7923	United States	124	SICKO MODE	Travis Scott	2085268	312.820	Americas
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
7832	United States	33	Strawberry Peels (feat. Young Thug & Gunna)	Lil Uzi Vert	4007781	115.350	Americas
7853	United States	54	CITY OF ANGELS	24kGoldn	3443366	112.493	Americas
7971	United States	172	Skechers	DripReport	1731265	106.000	Americas

200 rows × 7 columns

Longest duration song in the United States.

The added pipe line takes the result of the filter, and gives it to arrange. You specify that you want to sort in descending order of duration.

arrange and filter

(music_top200
  >> filter(_.country == "United States")
  >> arrange(-_.duration)
)

	country	position	track_name	artist	streams	duration	continent
7841	United States	42	After Hours	The Weeknd	3672033	361.027	Americas
7915	United States	116	Life Is Good (feat. Drake, DaBaby & Lil Baby) - Remix	Future	2181930	315.346	Americas
7923	United States	124	SICKO MODE	Travis Scott	2085268	312.820	Americas
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
7832	United States	33	Strawberry Peels (feat. Young Thug & Gunna)	Lil Uzi Vert	4007781	115.350	Americas
7853	United States	54	CITY OF ANGELS	24kGoldn	3443366	112.493	Americas
7971	United States	172	Skechers	DripReport	1731265	106.000	Americas

200 rows × 7 columns

The result shows that the longest duration track in the United States is After Hours by The Weeknd.

We can explore many such questions with various combinations of dplyr verbs.

Over the course of these lessons, you’ll learn to pipe together multiple simple operations to create a rich and informative data analysis.

Let’s practice!

• siuba guide - arrange
• siuba api - arrange