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Basic Descriptive Statistics Using R

This document provides an overview of common descriptive statistics that can be calculated in R, including measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode, midrange), spread (variance, standard deviation, standard error of the mean, range, interquartile range), and distribution shape (skewness, kurtosis). Functions are demonstrated for calculating each statistic and visualizing data through histograms and boxplots.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
74 views4 pages

Basic Descriptive Statistics Using R

This document provides an overview of common descriptive statistics that can be calculated in R, including measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode, midrange), spread (variance, standard deviation, standard error of the mean, range, interquartile range), and distribution shape (skewness, kurtosis). Functions are demonstrated for calculating each statistic and visualizing data through histograms and boxplots.

Uploaded by

Monari Geofrey
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Last Modified January 26, 2007

Basic Descriptive Statistics Using R


In the following handout words and symbols in bold are R functions and words and
symbols in italics are entries supplied by the user; underlined words and symbols are
optional entries (all current as of version R-2.4.1). Sample texts from an R session are
highlighted with gray shading.

Measures of Central Tendency

• mean(object) – provides the mean of the object’s elements

> quarters = c(5.683, 5.620, 5.551, 5.549, 5.536,


+ 5.552, 5.548, 5.539, 5.554, 5.552, 5.684, 5.632

> mean(quarters)

[1] 5.583333

• median(object) – provides the median of the object’s elements

> median(quarters)

[1] 5.552

• mode– there is no built in function for finding an object’s mode; however, the
command table(object) creates a frequency table for the object’s elements and the
mode is the element in this table with the greatest frequency

> table(quarters)

5.536 5.539 5.548 5.549 5.551 5.552 5.554 5.62 5.632 5.683 5.684
1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

• midrange – there is no built in function for reporting the midrange; the command
shown below use the functions for an object’s maximum (max) and minimum (min)
to calculate and print the object’s midrange

> midrange = (max(quarters) + min(quarters))/2; midrange

[1] 5.61

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Last Modified January 26, 2007

Measures of Spread

• var(object) – provides the sample variance of the object’s elements

> var(quarters)

[1] 0.003116606

• sd(object) – provides the sample standard deviation of the object’s elements

> sd(quarters)

[1] 0.05582657

• standard error of the mean – there is no built in function for reporting the standard
error of the mean; the command shown below use the functions for the object’s
standard deviation (sd) and number of elements (length), as well as the mathematical
function for finding a square root (sqrt) to calculate and print the object’s standard
error of the mean

> sem = sd(quarters)/sqrt(length(quarters)); sem

[1] 0.01611574

• range – there is no built in function for reporting the range; the command shown
below use the functions for an object’s maximum (max) and minimum (min)
elements to calculate and print the object’s range

> range = (max(quarters) – min(quarters)); range

[1] 0.148

• IQR(object) – provides the object’s interquartile range; note – this value may differ
slightly from that provided by other programs because there is no single accepted
definition for FU and FL

> IQR(quarters)

[1] 0.07425

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Quantitative and Visual Representations of a Distribution’s Shape

• skew(object) – provides the skewness for an object; this function is not included in R,
but is available from the file “skew&kurt.RData,” which is available on the course’s
I-drive account.

> skew(quarters)

[1] 0.8508155

• kurt(object) – provides the kurtosis for an object relative to that of a normal


distribution; this function is not included in R, but is available from the file
“skew&kurt.RData,” which is available on the course’s I-drive account.

> kurt(quarters)

[1] -1.075001

• hist(object) – creates a histogram of the object’s elements with the number of


compartments chosen by R.

> hist(quarters)

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• boxplot(object 1, object 2…, names, horizontal = TRUE) – creates a boxplot of the


object’s elements (for multiple objects, a boxplot is drawn for each); names is a
vector containing the names of the objects, which adds labels on the x-axis when
plotting more than one boxplot. Setting horizontal to TRUE (the default value is
FALSE) creates a horizontal boxplot.

> boxplot(quarters)

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