Date and Time Manipulation in R: Fundamentals

In this second lesson of our course on strings, dates and times in R, you'll learn the fundamentals of working with dates and times in R.

Dates and times appear everywhere in an analysis context. Businesses want to see if a new advertising campaign has made a significant effect on their sales, so they would look for patterns before and after the campaign. Accelerometers in your phone keep track of your activity through time, so you can analyze how active you are throughout the day.

R doesn't have a built-in data type for dates and times, but it has well established functions that smooth the process of using them. Throughout this mission, we'll be using the lubridate package.

In the mission, you'll learn how dates and times are represented in Unix, how to extract a particular component from a datetime, how to calculate timespans and durations, and how to manipulate timezones.

By the end of this mission, you'll be comfortable with the fundamentals required to work with dates and times effectively in R.