Chapter 11 3. Separate Passenger Names

The Name column contains both last name and first name information. We can separate this column into two columns: Last_name and First_name.

titanic <- titanic %>%
  separate(
    col = Name,
    into = c("Last_name", "First_name"),
    sep = ","
  )

head(titanic %>% select(Last_name, First_name))

## # A tibble: 6 x 2
##   Last_name First_name                                   
##   <chr>     <chr>                                        
## 1 Braund    " Mr. Owen Harris"                           
## 2 Cumings   " Mrs. John Bradley (Florence Briggs Thayer)"
## 3 Heikkinen " Miss. Laina"                               
## 4 Futrelle  " Mrs. Jacques Heath (Lily May Peel)"        
## 5 Allen     " Mr. William Henry"                         
## 6 Moran     " Mr. James"

11.1 3.1 Remove Extra Spaces

After separating the names, the First_name column may contain extra spaces at the beginning. We can remove these using str_trim().

titanic <- titanic %>%
  mutate(First_name = str_trim(First_name, side = "left"))

head(titanic %>% select(Last_name, First_name))

## # A tibble: 6 x 2
##   Last_name First_name                                
##   <chr>     <chr>                                     
## 1 Braund    Mr. Owen Harris                           
## 2 Cumings   Mrs. John Bradley (Florence Briggs Thayer)
## 3 Heikkinen Miss. Laina                               
## 4 Futrelle  Mrs. Jacques Heath (Lily May Peel)        
## 5 Allen     Mr. William Henry                         
## 6 Moran     Mr. James