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BES - R Lab 1

This document provides an overview of basic R concepts including importing and working with data frames, descriptive statistics, and splitting data frames by factors. It discusses importing data from CSV files, the main data types in R, using assignment operators to create variables, and functions for summarizing and exploring data like str(), summary(), describeBy(), and by(). Exercises demonstrate how to extract subsets of data, check data types, produce summaries grouped by factors, and load data from other packages.

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Viem Anh
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73 views4 pages

BES - R Lab 1

This document provides an overview of basic R concepts including importing and working with data frames, descriptive statistics, and splitting data frames by factors. It discusses importing data from CSV files, the main data types in R, using assignment operators to create variables, and functions for summarizing and exploring data like str(), summary(), describeBy(), and by(). Exercises demonstrate how to extract subsets of data, check data types, produce summaries grouped by factors, and load data from other packages.

Uploaded by

Viem Anh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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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STA2 - R LAB 1

Review on Basics of R
1. Objectives
 Importing data
 Dataframe
 Basic descriptive functions
 The „by‟ function
This review lab is not intended to be comprehensive. Students thus are strongly advised to review all
labs in the course of Probability and Statistics (PAS).

2. Installing R & Rstudio


Detailed instruction on how to install R and Rstudio will be posted on your Google class.

3. How to create a variable


If we want to create a variable x that holds the result of the expression: 27*log10(3) + sqrt(65), we
can try:
 x <- 27*log10(3) + sqrt(65)
The “<-” is called the assignment operator, which assigns the value of the expression on the right
to whatever object we specify on the left. Note that R is a case-sensitive language, so x and X are
different. We are not required to declare the type of the variable. It is possible for a variable to hold
any object such as a function or a plot.
Exercise 1: Let‟s create a variable y that takes the value equaling the square root of ten times of x.
Then check the data type of y using the class function.
 class(y)

4. Main data types


In R, the basic data types include numeric, character and logical. Numeric data is the most common
data type. Numeric data comprise integers and decimals. For example, type in the following code:
 a <- 5
 class(a)
The next type of data is character. As its name suggests, character data are represented by strings of
characters and/or numbers.
 b <- "blue"
 class(b)
 b <- "blue5"
 class(b)
 b <- "5"
 class(b)

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STA2 - R LAB 1

Logical data can be either TRUE or FALSE. Let‟s type in:


 x <- FALSE
 y <- TRUE
 x==y
Notice that in the last statement, we use a comparison operator ==. Other comparison operators
are: <, >, !=, >=, <=. For example,
 5 >=7
 3<6
 TRUE !=FALSE
 9 <= 10

5. Managing working directory


To set our working directory, we can use setwd(“mydirectory”). Next, type getwd() at the
command prompt. Our current working directory should be listed. R will read files from and save
results to this directory. It is necessary that you set up your working directory in every lab
before you run any codes.
Exercise 2: Create a folder in your D directory and name it Lab1. Go back to R and change the
working directory to “D:/Lab1”. Now try to display our current working directory.

6. Importing data from a delimited text file


You can create a CSV file by entering data into Excel, and then save the file as a CSV (comma
delimited) file. Now, open the file mtcars.xlsx, and try saving it as a CSV file with the same name
mtcars. Copy and paste the file to be used for the lab into your working directory. We can use the
read.table() or read.csv() function to import csv data into R.
The code for reading the .csv file is shown below:
 data1 <- read.table("mtcars.csv",header=TRUE, sep=",",
quote="\"", stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

Exercise 3:
a. What does the following code do?
 extracted1 <- data1[1:10,]
 extracted2 <- data1[,1:3]
b. Check the structure of data1 using str() function. How many variables and observations are
there? Extract data for mpg, cyl and am variables and assign it to a data frame called
extracted3.
7. Data frames
A data frame in R is analogous to a dataset in SPSS, SAS or Stata. It is more general than a matrix in
that it permits different data types (numeric, character…) for different columns. Usually, a column
represents data for a variable (column name = variable name), and each row represents data for one
observation (or case in the language of SPSS). Data for one column must be of the same type.

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STA2 - R LAB 1

Note down the variable names, the number of variables, and the number of observations in data1.
What does the first column represent?
Let‟s try the following
mean(data1$mpg)
sd(data1$mpg)
summary(data1$mpg)
plot(data1$mpg, data1$wt)

In the above code, we access the mpg variable of the data1 data frame via the $ notation. This
notation signifies that we are dealing with a specific variable from that data frame.

8. Descriptive statistics
The following code produces summary statistics for 3 variables simultaneously.
 summary(data1[c("mpg", "drat", "wt")])

If we want more descriptive measures, the function stat.desc() in the pastecs package can do a
good job. Let‟s install the pastecs package. Then follow the code listing below:
 library(pastecs)
 myvars <- c("mpg", "drat", "wt")
 stat.desc(data1[myvars], basic=TRUE, desc=TRUE, norm=FALSE,
p=0.95)

Note that by default, basic=TRUE, desc=TRUE, norm=FALSE, p=0.95.


Note that all numerical descriptive measures introduced in the labs (e.g. sd, var, etc.) are
sample measures. If you wish to compute measures for a population, in some cases you
have to adjust the obtained values by an appropriate formula.
The describeBy() function in the psych package provides more summary statistics by group.
Let‟s try:
 describeBy(data1["mpg"], data1$cyl)

Exercise 4: Use describeBy() function to produce summary statistics for mpg variable grouped by
am and cyl. Use mat=TRUE to display results in the form of a matrix. You should use list to
include more than 1 grouping variable.

9. Apply a Function to a Data Frame Split by Factors


The by( ) function applies a function to each level of a factor or factors of a data frame.
The basic format of this function is as follows:
by(data, a factor or a list of factors, a function to be applied, ...,
simplify = TRUE)

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STA2 - R LAB 1

For instance, if we want to obtain a summary on mpg variable separately for each number of
cylinders in data1 data frame, we can use the following code:
 by(data1$mpg,data1$cyl,summary)
 by(data1$mpg,list(Cylinder=data1$cyl),summary)

If we want to produce a summary for mpg variable for each level of both am and cyl variables, we
can type in R the following code:
 by(data1$mpg,list(data1$am, data1$cyl),summary)
 by(data1$mpg,list(AM=data1$am, Cyl=data1$cyl),summary)

Exercise 5. Load the textbooks data from the openintro package. Examine a summary of the price
differences between new textbook sold at the UCLA bookstore and on Amazon for two subsets:
courses where one book is required and where more than one book is required.
 install.packages("openintro”)
 library(openintro)
 data(textbooks)
10. Recap questions
a. What does the assignment operator do?
b. What are the main data types?
c. What function is used to check for data type of an object?
d. Print the data1 dataset. Find the sample mean and standard deviation of the weight
variable. Display the five-number summary for the weight variable. Provide a summary
for hp variable grouped by cyl variable using the functions describeBy() and by().

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