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I think this renaming column method might work for my option a) above (just saw this Data wrangling essentials notebook posted in #community)! Still curious about option b) above.

Here’s a bit more information on bracket notation

d["name"]

to access properties (works for property names with spaces, hyphens, start with numbers, etc - things that break with the

d.name

dot notation): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Working_with_Objects#accessing_properties

To add to what Allison said, you need

d["weight (lb)"]

instead of

d.weight (lb)

. In JavaScript,

d.foo

is shorthand for

d["foo"]

. But you can only use that shorthand when

foo

is a valid JavaScript identifier.

weight (lb)

is not a valid JavaScript identifier because it has a space and parens, so you have to use the long form.

Thanks so much @Allison (Observable Team) and @Mike Bostock! I appreciate how your bit of time given to this was way more helpful than the hour or more I spent fumbling with Google searches.