Why are R Data Frames commonly used in data analysis?

R data frames are commonly used in data analysis because they can store data of different types (such as numbers, characters, and factors) and are structured like tables, making them similar to database tables or spreadsheets. This structure allows for easy manipulation, filtering, and analysis of data.

# Creating a data frame for data analysis
df <- data.frame(
    ID = 1:3,
    Name = c("Alice", "Bob", "Charlie"),
    Age = c(25, 30, 35),
    Gender = factor(c("Female", "Male", "Male"))
)

# Printing the data frame
print(df)

# Output:
#   ID    Name Age Gender
# 1  1   Alice  25 Female
# 2  2     Bob  30   Male
# 3  3 Charlie  35   Male

In this example, the data frame df contains a mixture of numeric, character, and factor data. This flexibility, combined with their tabular structure, makes data frames the go-to data structure for most data analysis tasks in R.