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Vectors, matrices, and arrays
Creating and working with vectors}
There are several ways to create a vector in R. Where the elements are
spaced by exactly 1, just separate the values of the first and last
elements with a colon.
1:5
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5
The function seq (for sequence) is more flexible. Its typical
arguments are from, to, and by (or, in place of by, you can
specify length.outto indicate the length of the sequence rather than
the step size).
seq(from = -10, to = 10, by = 2)
## [1] -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Note that the by argument does not need to be an integer. When all the
elements in a vector are identical, use the rep function (for repeat).
rep(4,5)
## [1] 4 4 4 4 4
For other cases, use c (for concatenate or combine).
c(2,1,5,100,2)
## [1] 2 1 5 100 2
Note that you can name the elements within a vector.
c(a=2,b=1,c=5,d=100,e=2)
## a b c d e
## 2 1 5 100 2
Any of these expressions could be assigned to a symbolic variable, using an assignment operator.
v1<- c(2,1,5,100,2)
v1
## [1] 2 1 5 100 2
Variable names can be any combination of letters, numbers, and the
symbols . and _, but they can not start with a number or with _.
Google has a R style
guide which describes
good and poor examples of variable name attribution, but generally it is
a personal preference on how you name your variables.
probably.not_a.good_example.for.a.name.100<- seq(1,2,0.1)
probably.not_a.good_example.for.a.name.100
## [1] 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.0
The c function is very useful for setting up arguments for other
functions, as will be shown later. As with all R functions, both
variable names and function names can be substituted into function calls
in place of numeric values.
x<- rep(1:3)
y<- 4:10
z<- c(x,y)
z
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Although R prints the contents of individual vectors with a horizontal
orientation, R does not have column vectors and row vectors, and
vectors do not have a fixed orientation. This makes use of vectors in
R very flexible.
Vectors do not need to contain numbers, but can contain data with any of the modes mentioned earlier (numeric, logical, character, and complex), as long as all the data in a vector are of the same mode.
Logical vectors are very useful in R for sub-setting data i.e., for
isolating some part of an object that meets certain criteria. For
relational commands, the shorter vector is repeated as many as necessary
to carry out the requested comparison for each element in the longer
vector.
x<- 1:10
x > 5
## [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
Also, note that when logical vectors are used in arithmetic, they are
changed (coerced in R terms) into a vector of binary elements: 1 or 0.
Continuing with the above example:
a<- x > 5
a
## [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
a * 1.4
## [1] 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4
One function that is commonly used on character data is . It concatenates character data (and can also work with numerical and logical elements—these become character data).
paste("A", "B","C","D",TRUE, 42)
## [1] "A B C D TRUE 42"
Note that the paste function is very different from c. The paste
function concatenates its arguments into a single character value, while
the c function combines its arguments into a vector, where each
argument becomes a single element. The paste function becomes handy
when you want to combine the character data that are stored in several
symbolic variables.
month<- "June"
day<- 7
year<- 1997
paste("A poor soul, on the ",
day,"th day of ",month,", ", year
, ", lost their mind", sep="")
## [1] "A poor soul, on the 7th day of June, 1997, lost their mind"
This is especially useful with loops, when a variable with a changing value is combined with other data. Loops will be discussed in a later section.
group<- 1:10
id<- LETTERS[1:10]
for(i in 1:10){
print(paste("group =", group[i], "id =", id[i]))
}
## [1] "group = 1 id = A"
## [1] "group = 2 id = B"
## [1] "group = 3 id = C"
## [1] "group = 4 id = D"
## [1] "group = 5 id = E"
## [1] "group = 6 id = F"
## [1] "group = 7 id = G"
## [1] "group = 8 id = H"
## [1] "group = 9 id = I"
## [1] "group = 10 id = J"
LETTERS is a constant that is built into R, and is a vector of
uppercase letters A through Z (different from letters).
Vector arithmetic, some common functions, and vectorised operations
In R, vectors can be used directly in arithmetic operations.
Operations are applied on an element-by-element basis. This can be
referred to as vectorised arithmetic, and along with vectorised
functions (described below), it is a quality that makes R a very
efficient programming language.
x<- 6:10
x
## [1] 6 7 8 9 10
x+2
## [1] 8 9 10 11 12
For an operation carried out on two vectors, the mathematical operation is applied on an element-by-element basis.
y<- c(4,3,7,1,1)
y
## [1] 4 3 7 1 1
z<- x + y
z
## [1] 10 10 15 10 11
When two vectors having different numbers of elements used in an
expression together, R will repeat the smaller vector. For example,
with vector of length one, i.e. a single number:
x<- 1:10
m<- 0.8
b<- 2
y<- m * x + b
y
## [1] 2.8 3.6 4.4 5.2 6.0 6.8 7.6 8.4 9.2 10.0
If the number of rows in the smaller vector is not a multiple of the
larger vector (often indicative of an error) R will return a warning.
x<- 1:10
m<- 0.8
b<- c(2,1,1)
y<- m * x + b
## Warning in m * x + b: longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object
## length
y
## [1] 2.8 2.6 3.4 5.2 5.0 5.8 7.6 7.4 8.2 10.0
Some arithmetic operators that are available in R include:
+addition *-subtraction*multiplication/division^exponentiation%/%integer division%%modulo (remainder)log (a)natural log ofalog10 (a)base 10 log ofaexp (a)exponent ofasine (a)sine ofacos (a)cosine ofa*tan (a)tangent ofasqrt (a)square root ofa
Some simple functions that are useful for vector math include:
minminimum value of a set of numbersmaxmaximum of a set of numberspminparallel minima (compares multiple vectors row-by-row)pmaxparallel maximasumsum of all elementslengthlength of a vector (or number of columns in a data frame)nrownumber of rows in a vector of data framencolnumber of columnsmeanarithmetic meansdstandard deviationrnormgenerates a vector of normally-distributed random numberssignif,ceiling,floorrounding
Many, many other functions are available.
R also has a few built in constants, including pi.
pi
## [1] 3.141593
Parentheses can be used to control the order of operations, as in any other programming language.
7 - 2 * 4
## [1] -1
is different from:
(7-2) * 4
## [1] 20
and
10^1:5
## [1] 10 9 8 7 6 5
is different from:
10^(1:5)
## [1] 1e+01 1e+02 1e+03 1e+04 1e+05
Many functions in R are capable of accepting vectors (or even data
frames, arrays, and lists) as input for single arguments, and returning
an object with the same structure. These vectorised functions make
vector manipulations very efficient. Examples of such functions include
log, sine, and sqrt, For example:
x<- 1:10
sqrt(x)
## [1] 1.000000 1.414214 1.732051 2.000000 2.236068 2.449490 2.645751 2.828427
## [9] 3.000000 3.162278
or
sqrt(1:10)
## [1] 1.000000 1.414214 1.732051 2.000000 2.236068 2.449490 2.645751 2.828427
## [9] 3.000000 3.162278
The previous expressions are also equivalent to:
sqrt(c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10))
## [1] 1.000000 1.414214 1.732051 2.000000 2.236068 2.449490 2.645751 2.828427
## [9] 3.000000 3.162278
But they are not the same as the following, where all the numbers are interpreted as individual values for multiple arguments.
## This will throw an error
sqrt(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
There are also some functions designed for making vectorised operations
on lists, matrices, and arrays: these include apply and lapply
Matrices and arrays
Arrays are multi-dimensional collections of elements and matrices are
simply two-dimensional arrays. R has several operators and functions
for carrying out operations on arrays, and matrices in particular
(e.g. matrix multiplication).
To generate a matrix, the matrix function can be used. For example:
X<- matrix(1:15, nrow= 5, ncol=3)
X
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 1 6 11
## [2,] 2 7 12
## [3,] 3 8 13
## [4,] 4 9 14
## [5,] 5 10 15
Note that the filling order is by column by default (i.e. each column is filled before moving onto the next one). The unpacking order is the same:
as.vector(X)
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
If, for any reason, you want to change the filling order, you can use
the byrow argument:
X<- matrix(1:15, nrow= 5, ncol=3, byrow=T)
X
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 1 2 3
## [2,] 4 5 6
## [3,] 7 8 9
## [4,] 10 11 12
## [5,] 13 14 15
A similar function is available for higher-order arrays, called array.
Here is an example with a three-dimensional array:
Y<- array(1:30, dim= c(5,3,2))
Y
## , , 1
##
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 1 6 11
## [2,] 2 7 12
## [3,] 3 8 13
## [4,] 4 9 14
## [5,] 5 10 15
##
## , , 2
##
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 16 21 26
## [2,] 17 22 27
## [3,] 18 23 28
## [4,] 19 24 29
## [5,] 20 25 30
Arithmetic with matrices and arrays that have the same dimensions is straightforward, and is done on an element-by-element basis. This true for all the arithmetic operators listed in earlier sections.
Z<- matrix (1, nrow=5, ncol=3)
Z
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 1 1 1
## [2,] 1 1 1
## [3,] 1 1 1
## [4,] 1 1 1
## [5,] 1 1 1
X + Z
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 2 3 4
## [2,] 5 6 7
## [3,] 8 9 10
## [4,] 11 12 13
## [5,] 14 15 16
This does not work when dimensions do not match:
## This will throw an error
Z<- matrix (1, nrow=3, ncol=3)
X + Z
For mixed vector/array arithmetic, vectors are recycled if needed.
Z
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 1 1 1
## [2,] 1 1 1
## [3,] 1 1 1
## [4,] 1 1 1
## [5,] 1 1 1
x<- 1:9
Z + x
## Warning in Z + x: longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object
## length
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 2 7 3
## [2,] 3 8 4
## [3,] 4 9 5
## [4,] 5 10 6
## [5,] 6 2 7
y<- 1:3
Z + y
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 2 4 3
## [2,] 3 2 4
## [3,] 4 3 2
## [4,] 2 4 3
## [5,] 3 2 4
R also has operators for matrix algebra. The operator %*% carries
out matrix multiplication, and the function solve can invert matrices.
X<- matrix(c(1,2.5,6,7.5,4.9,5.6,9.9,7.8,9.3), nrow=3)
X
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 1.0 7.5 9.9
## [2,] 2.5 4.9 7.8
## [3,] 6.0 5.6 9.3
solve(X)
## [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] 0.07253886 -0.5492228 0.3834197
## [2,] 0.90385723 -1.9228555 0.6505469
## [3,] -0.59105738 1.5121858 -0.5315678
Exercises
- Generate a vector of numbers that contains the sequence 1, 2, 3, …10
(try to use the least amount of code possible to do this). Assign
this vector to the variable
x, and then carry out the following vector arithmetic.
- log10x
- lnx
- $\frac{\sqrt}{2-{x}}$
-
Use an appropriate function to generate a vector of 100 numbers that go from 0 to 2π, with a constant interval. Assuming this fist vector is called
x, create a new vector that contains sine*(2*x*−0.5*π*). Determine the minimum and maximum of *sine(2x−0.5π). Does this match with what you expect? -
Create 5 vectors, each containing 10 random numbers. Give each vector a different name. Create a new vector where the 1s**t element contains the sum of the 1s**t elements in your original 5 vectors, the 2n**d element contains the sum of the 2n**d elements, etc. Determine the mean of this new vector.
-
Create the following matrix using the least amount of code:
X<- matrix(1:25, nrow= 5, ncol=5, byrow=T)
X
## [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
## [1,] 1 2 3 4 5
## [2,] 6 7 8 9 10
## [3,] 11 12 13 14 15
## [4,] 16 17 18 19 20
## [5,] 21 22 23 24 25
-
For a small challenge, try this. Given the following set of linear equations:
27.2*x* + 32*y* − 10.8*z* = 401.2 *x* − 1.48*y* = 0 409.1*x* + 13.5*z* = 2.83
Solve for x, y, and z.