An example script for knitr’s spin

I wrote up a quick example on how to use spin from the knitr package to compile an R script, as opposed to an R Markdown file, into a report. Dean Attali’s posts were what got me started on spin, so I’m really just drawing on much of his material. Also, his ezknitr package is invaluable for dealing with knitr working directory quirks.

I usually use spin at the “analysis” stage - after data cleaning but before writing the paper. I don’t like using R Markdown at this point yet because there’s still a lot of coding and iteration going on, which makes it tricky to navigate between code chunks. But I still want to be able to produce “reports” that I can refer back to or show to advisors/colleagues, and spin is precisely for that middle ground.

Dean has an example script on his first post about spin but I wanted to write up a really simple one that gets at the essence of how spin works. The accompanying spin_example.html shows you what the output should look like. You’ll need to install the tidyverse and gapminder packages but other than that the script should be self-contained.