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What Is A Data Frame in R?

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106 views5 pages

What Is A Data Frame in R?

Uploaded by

SECE20A39MRUNAL VAIDYA
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1. What is a Data Frame in R?

A data frame in R is a crucial data structure for storing and manipulating


structured data in a row-and-column format, similar to a table in a relational
database or a spreadsheet. It is two-dimensional, with one dimension
representing rows and the other representing columns. Each column in a data
frame is a vector of the same length, meaning all columns must have the same
number of elements.
In a data frame, columns are known as variables, and rows are known as
observations. If you are new to R programming, I highly recommend checking
out the R Programming Tutorial, where R concepts are explained with
examples.

Here are some key characteristics of data frames in R:

1. Rectangular Structure: A data frame is a rectangular structure where


data is organized into rows and columns. Each column represents a
variable, and each row represents an observation or a case.
2. Homogeneous Columns: Each column in a data frame can contain
elements of different data types, but all elements within a single
column must have the same data type. This allows data frames to
handle mixed data, such as numbers, characters, and logical values.
3. Column Names: Data frames have column names, which are usually
used to label and reference variables or attributes. You can access
individual columns using these column names.
4. Row Names: Data frames also have row names, which serve as row
identifiers. By default, rows are labeled with sequential numbers, but
you can assign custom row names if needed.
R also provides a third-party package dplyr which provides a grammar for data
manipulation that closely works with the data frame. To use this package, you
need to install the package in R.
Advantages of R Data Frames:

1. Structure and Organization: Data frames provide a structured and


organized way to store and work with tabular data. The two-
dimensional structure, with rows and columns, makes it easy to
understand and manipulate data.
2. Data Import and Export: Data frames are commonly used for
importing data from various sources (e.g., CSV files, Excel
spreadsheets, databases) and exporting data to different formats. R
provides built-in functions and packages to facilitate these tasks.
3. Data Exploration and Summary: Data frames are compatible with
functions for data exploration, including summary statistics, data
visualization, and various plotting libraries. This helps analysts and
data scientists gain insights into the data.
4. Data Manipulation: R provides a rich set of functions and packages
(e.g., dplyr, tidyr) specifically designed for data manipulation with
data frames. You can filter, transform, reshape, and aggregate data
efficiently.
Use Cases of R Data Frames:

1. Data Analysis: Data frames are the foundation for data analysis in R.
You can perform statistical tests, hypothesis testing, and regression
analysis with structured data.
2. Data Visualization: Data frames are compatible with R’s data
visualization packages (e.g., ggplot2), allowing you to create a wide
range of charts, graphs, and visualizations for data exploration and
presentation.
3. Data Cleaning and Preprocessing: Data frames are used to clean and
preprocess data, including handling missing values, dealing with
outliers, and standardizing data.
4. Data Subsetting and Filtering: Analysts use data frames to extract
specific subsets of data based on criteria and conditions, facilitating
focused analysis.
5. Merging and Joining Data: Data frames are essential for combining
data from multiple sources. You can merge or join data based on
common variables to create comprehensive datasets.
6. Grouped Operations: Packages like dplyr make it easy to perform
grouped operations and aggregations on data, making it simple to
compute group-wise statistics.
7. Machine Learning: Many machine learning algorithms in R require
data frames as input. You can prepare your data in a data frame format
before applying machine learning techniques.
8. Time Series Analysis: Data frames are used to store and analyze time
series data, enabling time-based operations and modeling.
9. Reporting and Dashboards: Data frames are employed in creating
reports and dashboards using RMarkdown, Shiny, and other reporting
tools, providing a structured format for data presentation.
10.Export and Sharing: After analysis and modeling, you can export
results as data frames for sharing with colleagues or use in other
applications.
2. Initialize a Data Frame in R using

data.frame()

To explore a data frame, the first step is to create one. You can easily create a
data frame using the data.frame() function. To do this, simply pass a list of
vectors of the same length as an argument to the function. Each vector
represents a column in the data frame, and it’s important to ensure that the
length of each column is equal to the number of rows in the data frame. Besides
this, there are different ways to create a data frame in R.
2.1 Syntax of data.frame()

Below is the syntax of data.frame() function.


# Syntax of data.frame()
data.frame(…, row.names = NULL, check.rows = FALSE,
check.names = TRUE, fix.empty.names = TRUE,
stringsAsFactors = default.stringsAsFactors ())
The following are the parameters of the data.frame() function.
 row.names : It specifies the row names of the data frame. When we
set row.names = NULL, means no row names are set for the data
frame. If you want to assign row names, you can provide a vector of
names here.
 check.rows : This is a logical parameter. If set to TRUE, it checks that
each row has the same number of columns as the first row. This can
help identify errors in the data input. By default, it’s set to FALSE.
 check.names : Another logical parameter. When set to TRUE, it
checks and adjusts the names of the variables. For example, it might
remove spaces or special characters from the column names. Default
is TRUE.
 fix.empty.names : A logical parameter that determines whether to
fix empty names in the column names. If set to TRUE, empty names
will be replaced with a unique name. Default is TRUE.
 stringsAsFactors : A logical parameter that determines if character
vectors should be converted to factors (categorical variables) by
default. This is often set globally in R
through options(stringsAsFactors = TRUE/FALSE) . When set
to TRUE, character vectors are converted to factors, and when set
to FALSE, they remain as character vectors. Default behavior depends
on the version of R and settings.
2.2 Create R DataFrame Example

To initialize a data frame in R, you can use the data.frame() function That
takes a list or vector as its first argument. In R, a vector contains elements of
the same data type, such as logical, integer, double, character, complex, or raw.
Let’s create vectors of equal length and pass them into this function to get the
data frame.
# Create Vectors
id <- c(10,11,12,13)
name <- c('sai','ram','deepika','sahithi')
dob <- as.Date(c('1990-10-02','1981-3-24','1987-6-14','1985-8-16'))

# Create DataFrame using vector


df <- data.frame (id,name,dob)

# Print DataFrame
print("Create data frame:")
df
As you can see from the above example, I have created a data frame using
vectors.

Yields the below output.

By default, the data frame assigns sequential numbers as row indexes, starting
from 1.

In another way, you can create a data frame using vectors. Let’s create vectors
within the data.frame() function and create a data frame of specified dimension.

# Create DataFrame
df <- data.frame (
id = c(10,11,12,13),
name = c('sai','ram','deepika','sahithi'),
dob = as.Date(c('1990-10-02','1981-3-24','1987-6-14','1985-8-16'))
)

# Print DataFrame
df
Yields the same as the output.

3. Get the Type of Data Frame

To get the type of each column of the data frame you can use
the sapply() function. For that, you need to pass the class parameter along
with the data frame into this function. It will return the data type of each
column present in the data frame.
# Display datatypes
print(sapply(df, class))

# Output:
# id name dob
# "numeric" "Factor" "Date"
You can also check the type of the data frame using the str() function. To get
the data type of each column of the data frame using this function you can
simply pass the data frame into this function. It will return the data type of each
column very explicitly.
# Display datatypes
str(df)

# Output
# 'data.frame': 4 obs. of 3 variables:
# $ id : num 10 11 12 13
# $ name: Factor w/ 4 levels "deepika","ram",..: 4 2 1 3
# $ dob : Date, format: "1990-10-02" "1981-03-24" "1987-06-14" "1985-08-16"

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