How to Use This Book

This guide is designed to help you become productive with TidyChef as quickly as possible. You don’t need to read everything before getting started—begin experimenting early.

Quick Start

• ➡️ Start here: Chapter 1: Basics. This introduces TidyChef’s core concepts and how to apply them.

• Then move on to the Examples. These are presented in roughly increasing order of complexity.

  You don’t need to complete all the documentation before working through examples. Most users find it helpful to alternate between reading and hands-on experimentation. The examples and documentation are designed to reinforce each other.

Next Steps

• Once you’re comfortable with the basics, proceed to Chapter 2: Intermediate. It introduces more advanced techniques for handling messy, real-world data. The example list remains relevant—later entries often reflect intermediate concepts.

• Chapter 3: Advanced is for those looking to extend TidyChef or integrate it into broader tooling. This chapter is optional but valuable for power users and developers.

A Note on Terminology

• TidyChef often uses the phrase “Excel reference” or the function excel_ref(). This has nothing to do with Microsoft Excel or spreadsheets. It’s simply a practical convention—saying “Excel reference C3” is immediately understandable, whereas “x offset 2, y offset 4” is not.

Extending TidyChef

• TidyChef is built as an extensible framework. While its core features handle most common needs, it’s designed to be easily extended—supporting new data formats, acquisition methods, selection logic, or domain-specific validation. Extensions integrate cleanly and are fully documented, allowing you to adapt TidyChef to your workflow.