Objects, Vectors, and Data Frames

R stores information in objects. An object can contain a single value, a list of values, a table, a function, or a more complex structure. For introductory clinical data management, the most important structures are vectors and data frames. A vector is a one-dimensional collection of values of the same general type. A data frame is a rectangular table made of columns and rows. Most clinical datasets imported into R are represented as data frames or tibbles. A tibble is a modern form of data frame used by the tidyverse.