If you need to calculate changes such as last month versus the prior month or last month versus the same month a year earlier, R is a good choice. It’s easy to do those calculations — and you don’t have to worry whether a spreadsheet formula was properly clicked and dragged to cover all the necessary cells.
Like so many things in R, there are multiple ways to do this. I’ll cover two of them.
First, I’ll import some data about daily cycling trips on Bluebikes, the bicycle-share system in Boston, Cambridge, and three other nearby cities. If you want to follow along, download this zip file of CSV data and unzip it.