Introduction to R

Noratiqah Mohd Ariff, UKM

Part I
INTRODUCTION
Contents
1. Basic Things to Know
2. Basic Types of Data in R
3. R as A Math Calculator
4. Logical Operators in R
Basic Things to Know
◎What is R?
○An open-source statistical environment which uses
programming syntax with many built-in statistical functions.
◎Download/ Install R
○Go to R webpage. You can google R.
○Download R and install in your computer.
◎Start R
○Double click on R shortcut icon/ Go to Start → Program → R.
Basic Things to Know
◎Getting to know R
○R console (the workspace)
○script
○variables (objects)
○assignment operator (<-, =)
○function
○arguments
○comment operator (#)
○( ) for functions, [ ] for vectors
Basic Things to Know
◎Quit R
○q( ) or File → Exit.
◎Help in R
○help ( ) or type “?” in front of the name of the function you
need help with
○apropos( ) if you are not sure about the name of the function
◎List all active variables in the workspace
○ls ( )
◎Remove variables
○rm ( ) to remove specific variable or rm (list=ls( )) to remove
all variables
○You can also go to Misc → Remove all objects
Basic Things to Know
◎Set working directory
○Use setwd to set your own working directory (where all
your files will be save)
○setwd(“C:/rclass/”) OR setwd(“C:\\rclass\\”)
◎Packages
○Install packages manually by first downloading the zip file
from the CRAN webpage, then Packages → Install
package(s) from local zip file.
○Use CRAN directly in R, Packages → Set CRAN mirror, then
Packages → Install package(s).
 Basic Things to Know
◎ Save your work
○Save workspace, File → Save workspace (save everything)
○Save script, click on active script, then go to File → Save as
(save edited commands and comments)
○Save history, File → Save history (save all commands)
○Copy and paste anything from R to any file suitable, text file,
Microsoft word, Excel and so on.
◎Load previous work
○Load workspace, Open script, Load history from File.
Basic Types of Data in R
◎Numeric
○Decimal values are called “numerics” in R.
○It is the default computational data type.
◎Integer
○Integer numbers. A numeric value can be coerced into
an integer with as.integer( ) function.
○To check if a variable is an integer, use the is.integer( )
function.
Basic Types of Data in R
◎Complex
○A complex number is defined by using the imaginary value i;
e.g. a<-1+2i
○A numeric value can be coerced into a complex number with
as.complex( ) function.
○To check if a variable is a complex number, use the
is.complex( ) function.
◎Character
○A character object is used to represent string values.
○An object can be coerced into a character with as.character( )
function.
○To check if a variable is a character, use the is.character( )
function.
R as a Math Calculator
◎R includes the usual arithmetic operations
such as +, -, *, / and ^.
◎These operators have the standard
precedence, with exponentiation (^) highest
and addition/ subtraction (+, -) lowest. As usual,
the order of these precedence can be control by
the use of parentheses ( ).
R as a math calculator
Functions Details
sqrt() Square root
abs() Absolute value
sin(), cos(), tan() Trigonometric functions (in radians)
pi The value for π = 3.1415926
exp(), log() Exponential and natural logarithm functions
log10() Logarithm with base 10
gamma() Euler’s gamma function
factorial() Factorial function (!)
choose() Combination function
Logical Operators in R
◎R also make use of common logical operators. These
operators are defined in R as follows:
Operators Details
== Equal to
!= Not equal to
<, <= Less than, less than or equal to
>, >= Greater than, greater than or equal to
& Logical AND
| Logical OR
Examples
◎43+32+1
> 4^3+3^(2+1)
[1] 91

1+ 2 
2

◎  
 3+ 4 

> ((1+2)/(3+4))^2
[1] 0.1836735

Please do Exercise 1
Part II
VECTORS
Contents
1. Create Vectors
2. Vector Arithmetic
Create Vectors
1) Use function c( ).
◎The function c( ), known as the catenate or
concatenate function, can be used to create
vectors from scalar or other vectors.
◎Examples:
> x<-c(1,3,5,7) #create vector x from single
numbers/ scalars
> y<-c(2,4,6,8) #create vector y from single
numbers/ scalars
> z<-c(x,y) #create vector z from vector x and
vector y
Create Vectors
2) Use colon operator “:”.
◎The colon coperator can be used to generate
sequence of numbers which increase or decrease
by 1.
◎Examples:
> 1:10 #increasing sequence
> 10:1 #decreasing sequence
Create Vectors
3) Using the function seq( ).
◎The function seq( ) can be used to sequence of numbers starting
and stopping at specified values with increments defined by user.
◎This function contains 3 arguments, the first argument is the
starting point, the second argument is the stopping point and the
last argument is the increment.
◎Examples:
> seq(0,1,0.1) # values between 0 and 1 with an increment of 0.1
> seq(0,200,50) #values between 0 and 200 with an increment
of 50
> seq(20,5,-4) #values between 5 and 20 with an increment of -
4. The sequence is in decreasing order.
Create Vectors
4) Using the function rep( ).
◎The function rep( ) stands for repeat or replicate.
◎The function contains 2 arguments, the first argument is a
value or a vector, the second argument is the number of times
the value or each element of the vector (in the first argument) is
replicated.
◎Examples:
> rep(3,5) #repeat the number '3' five times
> rep(c(1,3,6,9),3) #repeat the vector 3 times
> a<-c(2,3,4); rep(a,4) #repeat vector a 4 times
> rep(1:3,2) #repeat sequence 2 times
> rep(1:3, c(2,2,2)) #repeat each element of sequence 2 times
Vector Arithmetic
◎The same functions used for scalars can be used
on vectors.
◎However, the length of the vectors must be
carefully observed or some vector arithmetic will
result in errors.
◎The square brackets [ ] are used to identify
specific elements in vectors.
◎Logical operators could also be used on vectors.
 Vector Arithmetic
◎Some useful functions for vectors are as follows:
Functions Details
length() The size of the vector
sum() Calculates the total of all values in the
vector
prod() Calculates the product of all values in the
vector
cumsum(), cumprod() Calculates the sumulative sums or products
in the vector
sort() Sort the values in the vector
diff() Computes the differences (with lag 1 as
default)
 Vector Index
◎Use to retrieve members of a vector
◎Example:
> x<-c(3,2,5,7,1)
> x[3]
[1] 5
> x[-2]
[1] 3 5 7 1
> x[c(1,4,2)]
[1] 3 7 2
> x[x<=3]
[1] 3 2 1
Part III
MATRICES
Contents
1. Create Matrices
2. Matrix Operations
 Create Matrices

◎R also accomodates calculations pertaining

matrices and higher dimensional arrays.
◎Matrices in R can be created by either inserting
single values, combining vectors or combining
matrices.
 Create Matrices
1) Use the function matrix().
◎Single values are written in the form of a vector and the function matrix() is
used on the vector to create a matrix. The vector could also be a sequence of
numbers.
◎The function has 4 arguments, the first argument is the vector, the second
argument nrow is the number of rows, the third argument ncol is the number
of columns and the last argument byrow is a logical operator where TRUE
indicates the values in the vector is fill in by row or otherwise (by default the
values will be fill in by column).
◎Examples:
> y<-c(3,6,14,90,54,2,8,65,28,45) #create vector y
> Y<-matrix(y,nrow=5,ncol=2) #fill in by column
> Y<-matrix(y,nrow=2) #fill in by column
> Y<-matrix(y,nrow=5,ncol=2,byrow=TRUE) #fill in by row
 Create Matrices
2) Use the function cbind() or rbind().
◎These two functions stand for column bind and
row bind to combine vectors and matrices in order to
form a new matrix.
◎ Examples:
> x<-c(56,8) #vector x
> y<-c(2,16) #vector y
> A<-rbind(x,y) #combine x and y as rows
> B<-cbind(x,y) #combine x and y as columns
 Matrix Operations
◎The same arithmetics and operations used for
scalars and vectors can be used on matrices. It will
apply itselves on each element of the matrix.
◎The dimension of the matrices must be carefully
observed or some matrix operations will result in
errors.
◎The square brackets [ ] are used to identify specific
elements in matrices.
◎Logical operators could also be used on matrices.
Matrix Operations
◎Some useful functions for matrices are as follows:
Functions Details
dim() Dimension of the matrix
rownames(), colnames() Names for each row and column
%*% Matrix multiplication
t() Matrix transpose
det() Determinant of a square matrix
solve() Matrix inverse, solves system of linear
equations
eigen() Computes eigenvalues and
eigenvectors
 Matrix Index
◎Use to retrieve members of a matrix
◎Example: > z[,c(3,1)]
> x<-c(3,2,5,7,1) [,1] [,2]
> y<-c(6,7,2,1,4) x 5 3
> z<-rbind(x,y) y 2 6
>z
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] > z[,1:3]
x 3 2 5 7 1 [,1] [,2] [,3]
y 6 7 2 1 4 x 3 2 5
> z[1,] y 6 7 2
[1] 3 2 5 7 1
> z[2,4]
y
1
Assigning Names
◎Assign names to each row using rownames()
◎Example:
rownames(z)<-c("row1","row2")
z
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
row1 3 2 5 7 1
row2 6 7 2 1 4
◎ Assign names to each column using colnames()
◎ Example:
colnames(z)<-c("col1","col2","col3","col4","col5")
z
col1 col2 col3 col4 col5
row1 3 2 5 7 1
row2 6 7 2 1 4
 “
Thank You.