R language: a tour

Vectors

Lists

Arrays

Data.frames

Functions

Published

March 18, 2025

M1 MIDS/MFA/LOGOS

Université Paris Cité

Année 2024

Course Homepage

Moodle

Objectives

This workbook intends to walk you through basic aspects of the R language and programming environment.

Packages

Base R can do a lot. But the full power of R comes from a fast growing collection of packages.

Packages are first installed (that is downloaded from cran and copied somewhere on the hard drive), and if needed, loaded during a session.

Installation can usually be performed using command install.packages(). In some circumstances, ad hoc installation commands (often from packages devtools) are needed
Package pak offers an interesting alternative to base R install.packages()
Once a package has been installed/downloaded on your hard drive
- if you want all objects exported by the package to be available in your session, you should load the package, using library() or require() (what’s the difference?). Technically, this loads the NameSpace defined by the package.
- if you just want to pick some objects exported from the package, you can use qualified names like package_name::object_name to access the object (function, dataset, …).

For example, when we write

gapminder <- gapminder::gapminder

we assign dataframe/tibble gapminder from package gapminder to identifier "gapminder" in global environment .

Function p_load() from pacman (package manager) blends installation and loading: if the package named in the argument of p_load() is not installed (not among the installed.packages()), p_load() attempts to install the package. If installation is successful, the package is loaded.

if (! require(pak)){
  install.packages("pak")
}

stopifnot(
  require("tidyverse"), 
  require("lobstr"),
  require("ggforce"),
  require("nycflights13"),
  require("patchwork"), 
  require("viridis"),
  require("MASS"),
  require("gapminder"),
  require("pryr"),
  require("pak")
)

Optional arguments

A very nice feature of R is that functions from base R as well as from packages have optional arguments with sensible default values. Look for example at documentation of require() using expression ?require.

Optional settings may concern individual functions or the collection of functions exported by some packages. In the next chunk, we reset the default color scales used by graphical functions from ggplot2.

opts <- options()  # save old options

options(ggplot2.discrete.colour="viridis")
options(ggplot2.continuous.colour="viridis")

You shall not confuse installing (on your hard-drive) and loading (in session) a package.

Question for Pythonistas

In what is the analogue of install.packages()?
In what is the analogue of require()/library()?

Numerical (atomic) vectors

Numerical (atomic) vectors form the most primitive type of R.

Vector creation and assignment

The next three lines create three numerical atomic vectors.

In IDE Rstudio, have a look at the environment pane on the right before running the chunk, and after.

Use ls() to investigate the environment before and after the execution of the three assignments.

ls()
x <- c(1, 2, 12)
y <- 5:7
z <- 10:1
x ; y ; z 
ls()

Question

What are the identifiers known in the global environment before execution of lines 2-4?
What are the identifiers known in the global environment after execution of lines 2-4?
Which objects are attached to identifiers x, y, and z?

Question

What does the next chunk?

ls()
w <- y
ls()

Question

Is the content of object denoted by y copied to a new object bound to w?
Interpret the result of w == y.
Interpret the result of identical(w,y) (use help("identical") if needed).

w == y 
identical(w,y)

Indexation, slicing, modification

Slicing a vector can be done in two ways:

providing a vector of indices to be selected. Indices need not be consecutive.
providing a Boolean mask, that is a logical vector to select a set of positions.

x <- c(1, 2, 12) ; y <- 5:7 ; z <- 10:1

Question

Explain the next lines

z[1]   # slice of length 1
z[0]   # What did you expect?
z[x]   # slice of length ??? index error ?
z[y]
z[x %% 2]   # what happens with x[0] ?
z[0 == (x %% 2)] # masking
z[c(2, 1, 1)]

Question

If the length of mask and and the length of the sliced vector do not coincide, what happens?

A scalar is just a vector of length \(1\)!

class(z)

[1] "integer"

class(z[1])

[1] "integer"

class(z[c(2,1)])

[1] "integer"

Question

Explain the next lines

y[2:3] <- z[2:3]
y == z[-10]

z[-11]

Question

Explain the next line

z[-(1:5)]

Question

How would you select the last element from a vector (say z)?

Question

Reverse the entries of a vector. Find two ways to do that.

In statistics, machine learning, we are often faced with the task of building grids of regularly spaced elements (these elements can be numeric or not). R offers a collection of tools to perform this. The most basic tool is rep().

Question

Repeat a vector \(2\) times
Repeat each element of a vector twice

Let us remove objects from the global environment.

rm(w, x, y ,z)

Numbers

So far, we told about numeric vectors. Numeric vectors are vectors of floating point numbers. R distinguishes several kinds of numbers.

Integers
Floating point numbers (double)

To check whether a vector is made of numeric or of integer, use is.numeric() or is.integer(). Use as.integer, as.numeric() to enforce type conversion.

Question

Explain the outcome of the next chunks

class(113L) ; class(113) ; class(113L + 113) ; class(2 * 113L) ; class(pi) ; as.integer(pi)

[1] "integer"

[1] "numeric"

[1] "numeric"

[1] "numeric"

[1] "numeric"

[1] 3

floor(pi) ; class(floor(pi)) # mind the floor

[1] 3

[1] "numeric"

Integer arithmetic

29L * 31L ; 899L %/% 32L ; 899L %% 30L

[1] 899

[1] 28

[1] 29

R integers are not the natural numbers from Mathematics

R numerics are not the real numbers from Mathematics

.Machine$double.eps

[1] 2.220446e-16

.Machine$double.xmax

[1] 1.797693e+308

.Machine$sizeof.longlong

[1] 8

u <- double(19L)
v <- numeric(5L)
w <- integer(7L)
lapply(list(u, v, w), typeof)

[[1]]
[1] "double"

[[2]]
[1] "double"

[[3]]
[1] "integer"

length(c(u, v, w))

[1] 31

typeof(c(u, v, w))

[1] "double"

R is (sometimes) able to make sensible use of Infinite.

log(0)

[1] -Inf

log(Inf)

[1] Inf

1/0

[1] Inf

0/0

[1] NaN

max(c( 0/0,1,10))

[1] NaN

max(c(NA,1,10))

[1] NA

max(c(-Inf,1,10))

[1] 10

is.finite(c(-Inf,1,10))

[1] FALSE  TRUE  TRUE

is.na(c(NA,1,10))

[1]  TRUE FALSE FALSE

is.nan(c(NaN,1,10))

[1]  TRUE FALSE FALSE

Computing with vectors

Summing, scalar multiplication

x <- 1:3
y <- 9:7

sum(x) ; prod(x)

[1] 6

[1] 6

z <- cumsum(1:3)
w <- cumprod(3:5)

x + y

[1] 10 10 10

x + z

[1] 2 5 9

2 * w

[1]   6  24 120

2 + w

[1]  5 14 62

w / 2

[1]  1.5  6.0 30.0

Question

How would you compute a factorial?

Question

Approximate \(\sum_{n=1}^\infty 1/n^2\) within \(10^{-3}\)?

Question

How would you compute the inner product between two (atomic numeric) vectors?

What we have called vectors so far are indeed atomic vectors.

Read Chapter on Vectors in R advanced Programming
Keep an eye on package vctrs for getting insights into the R vectors.

Numerical matrices

R offers a matrix class.

A <- matrix(1:50, nrow=5)
A

     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7] [,8] [,9] [,10]
[1,]    1    6   11   16   21   26   31   36   41    46
[2,]    2    7   12   17   22   27   32   37   42    47
[3,]    3    8   13   18   23   28   33   38   43    48
[4,]    4    9   14   19   24   29   34   39   44    49
[5,]    5   10   15   20   25   30   35   40   45    50

class(A)

[1] "matrix" "array"

Question

From the evaluation of the preceding chunk, can you guess whether it is easier the traverse a matrix in row-first order or in column-first order?

Creation, transposition and reshaping

A vector can be turned into a column matrix.

v <- as.matrix(1:5)
v

     [,1]
[1,]    1
[2,]    2
[3,]    3
[4,]    4
[5,]    5

A matrix can be transposed

t(v)  # transpose

     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    1    2    3    4    5

cat(dim(v), ' ', dim(t(v)), '\n')

5 1   1 5

A <- matrix(1, nrow=5, ncol=2) ; A

     [,1] [,2]
[1,]    1    1
[2,]    1    1
[3,]    1    1
[4,]    1    1
[5,]    1    1

Question

lobstr::mem_used() allows us to keep track of the amount of memory used by our R session. lobstr::obj_size() tells us the amount of memory used by the representation of an object.

Comment the next chunk

m1 <-lobstr::mem_used()
A <- matrix(rnorm(100000L), nrow=1000L)
m2 <- lobstr::mem_used()
lobstr::obj_size(A)

800.22 kB

B <- t(A)
lobstr::obj_size(B)

800.22 kB

m3 <- lobstr::mem_used()
m2-m1 ; m3-m2

804.94 kB

1.09 MB

Question

Is there a difference between the next two assignments?
How would you assign value to all entries of a matrix?

A <- matrix(rnorm(16), nrow=4)
A[] <- 0 ; A

     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,]    0    0    0    0
[2,]    0    0    0    0
[3,]    0    0    0    0
[4,]    0    0    0    0

A   <- 0 ; A

[1] 0

Question

What is the final shape of A?

A <- matrix(1, nrow=5, ncol=2) 
A
A[] <- 1:15 
A

We can easily generate diagonal matrices and constant matrices.

diag(1, 3)  # building identity matrix

     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]    1    0    0
[2,]    0    1    0
[3,]    0    0    1

matrix(0, 3, 3) # building null matrix

     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]    0    0    0
[2,]    0    0    0
[3,]    0    0    0

Question

Is there any difference between the next two assignments?

B <- A[]
B ; A

[1] 0

[1] 0

lobstr::obj_addr(B) ; lobstr::obj_addr(A)

[1] "0x601de46d1a68"

[1] "0x601de524b3d8"

B <- A
lobstr::obj_addr(B) ; lobstr::obj_addr(A)

[1] "0x601de524b3d8"

[1] "0x601de524b3d8"

Indexation, slicing, modification

Indexation consists in getting one item from a vector/list/matrix/array/dataframe.

Slicing and subsetting consists in picking a substructure:

subsetting a vector returns a vector
subsetting a list returns a list
subsetting a matrix/array returns a matrix/array (beware of implicit simplifications and dimension dropping)
subsetting a dataframe returns a dataframe or a vector (again, beware of implicit simplifications).

Question

Explain the next results

A <- matrix(1, nrow=5, ncol=2)

dim(A[sample(5, 3), -1])
dim(A[sample(5, 3), 1])
length(A[sample(5, 3), 1])
is.vector(A[sample(5, 3), 1])
A[10:15]
A[60]
dim(A[])

Question

How would you create a fresh copy of a matrix?

Computing with matrices

* versus %*%: %*% stands for matrix multiplication. In order to use it, the two matrices should have conformant dimensions.

t(v) %*% A

         [,1]      [,2]
[1,] 11.43027 -15.74215

There are a variety of reasonable products around. Some of them are available in R.

Question

How would you compute the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product between two matrices?

\[\langle A, B\rangle_{\text{HS}} = \text{Trace} \big(A \times B^\top\big)\]

Question

How can you invert a square (invertible) matrix?

Logicals

R has constants TRUE and FALSE.
Numbers can be coerced to logicals.

Question

Which numbers are truthies? falsies?
What is the value (if any) of ! pi & TRUE ?
What is the meaning of all( ) ?
What is the meaning of any( ) ?
Recall De Morgan’s laws. Check them with R.
Is | denoting an inclusive or an exclusive OR?

Handling three-valued logic

Question

TRUE &  (1> (0/0))
(1> (0/0)) | TRUE
(1> (0/0)) | FALSE
TRUE || (1> (0/0))
TRUE |  (1> (0/0))
TRUE || stopifnot(4<3)
# TRUE |  stopifnot(4<3)  
FALSE && stopifnot(4<3)
# FALSE & stopifnot(4<3)

Question

What is the difference between logical operators || and | ?

Remark: favor &, | over &&, ||.

`all` and `any`

Look at the definition of all and any.

Question

How would you check that a square matrix is symmetric?
How would you check that a matrix is diagonal?

Lists

While an instance of an atomic vector contains objects of the same type/class, an instance of list may contain objects of widely different types.

Question

Check an explain the output of the next chunk

p <- c(2, 7, 8)
q <- c("A", "B", "C")
x <- list(p, q)
x[2]
x
length(x)
rlang::is_vector(x)
rlang::is_atomic(x)
y <- c(p, q)
y
length(y)
rlang::is_atomic(y)
rlang::is_list(y)

Question

How would you build a list made of p, q, and x?
What is x[2] made of?
How does it compare with x[[2]]?

Question

Read and understand the next expressions.

is_atomic(p);  is_atomic(p[2]) ; is_atomic(p[[2]])

is_list(q); is_atomic(q)

is_list(x); is_atomic(x) ; class(x)

class(x[2]) ; class(x[[2]])
length(x[2]) ; length(x[[2]])

identical(q, x[[2]]) ; identical(q, x[2])

obj_addr(q) ; obj_addr(x[[2]]) ; obj_addr(x[2])
ref(x)
obj_addrs(x)
identical(x[2],x[[2]])

Functions is_atomic(), is_list(), ..., obj_addr() are from packages rlang and lobstr. See https://rlang.r-lib.org and https://lobstr.r-lib.org

Question

How would you replace "A" in x with "K"?

Read Chapter on Lists in R advanced Programming

Lookup tables (aka dictionaries) using named vectors

A lookup table maps strings to values. It can be implemented using named vectors. If we want to map: "seine" to "75", "loire" to "42", "rhone" to "69", "savoie" to "73" we can proceed in the following way:

codes <- c(75L, 42L, 69L, 73L)
names(codes) <- c("seine", "loire", "rhône", "savoie")

codes["rhône"];  codes["aube"]

rhône 
   69

<NA> 
  NA

Question

What is the class of codes ?

Question

Capitalize the names used by codes

Package stringr offers a function str_to_title() that could be of interest.

Factors

Factors exist in Base R. They play a very important role. Qualitative/Categorical variables are implemented as Factors.

Meta-package tidyverse offers a package dedicated to factor engineering: forcats.

yraw <- c("g1","g1","g2","g2","g2","g3")
print(yraw)

[1] "g1" "g1" "g2" "g2" "g2" "g3"

summary(yraw)

   Length     Class      Mode 
        6 character character

is.vector(yraw) ; is.atomic(yraw)

[1] TRUE

[1] TRUE

Question

yraw takes few values. It makes sense to make it a factor. How does it change the behavior of generic function summary ?

Load the (celebrated) iris dataset, and inspect variable Species

data(iris)

species <- iris$Species

levels(species)

[1] "setosa"     "versicolor" "virginica"

summary(species)

    setosa versicolor  virginica 
        50         50         50

Question

We may want to collapse virginica and versicolor into a single level called versinica

forcats offer a function fct_collapse().

Factors are used to represent categorical variables.

Question

Load the whiteside data from package MASS.
Have a glimpse.
Assign column Insul to y

Question

What is the class of y?
Is y a vector
Is y ordered? What does ordered mean here?
What are the levels of y ? How many levels has y?
Can you slice y ?
What are the binary representations of the different levels of y?

Question

Summarize factor y

Factors nuts and bolts

When coercing a vector (integer, character, …) to a factor, use forcats::as_factor() rather than base R as.factor().

Useful function to make nice barplots when constructing barplots.

Recall that when you want to display counts for a univariate categorical sample, you use a barplot. It is often desirable to rank the levels according to the displayed statistics (usually a count).

This can be done in a seamless way using functions like forcats::fct_infreq().

forcats::fct_count(y, prop = TRUE)

# A tibble: 2 × 3
  f          n     p
  <fct>  <int> <dbl>
1 Before    26 0.464
2 After     30 0.536

z <- sample(y, length(y), replace = TRUE)  # permutation of whiteside$Insul

sort(forcats::fct_infreq(z))       # first level is most frequent one

 [1] After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After 
[11] After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After 
[21] After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After  After 
[31] Before Before Before Before Before Before Before Before Before Before
[41] Before Before Before Before Before Before Before Before Before Before
[51] Before Before Before Before Before Before
Levels: After Before

forcats::fct_count(z)

# A tibble: 2 × 2
  f          n
  <fct>  <int>
1 Before    26
2 After     30

Question

Make z ordered with level After preceding Before. Does ordering impact the behavior of forcats::fct_count()?

Read Chapter on Factors in R for Data Science

Dataframes, `tibbles` and `data.tables`

A dataframe is a list of vectors with equal lengths. This is the way R represents and manipulates multivariate samples.

Any software geared at data science supports some kind of dataframe

Python Pandas
Python Dask
Spark
…

The iris dataset is the “Hello world!” of dataframes.

data(iris)

iris |>
  glimpse()

Rows: 150
Columns: 5
$ Sepal.Length <dbl> 5.1, 4.9, 4.7, 4.6, 5.0, 5.4, 4.6, 5.0, 4.4, 4.9, 5.4, 4.…
$ Sepal.Width  <dbl> 3.5, 3.0, 3.2, 3.1, 3.6, 3.9, 3.4, 3.4, 2.9, 3.1, 3.7, 3.…
$ Petal.Length <dbl> 1.4, 1.4, 1.3, 1.5, 1.4, 1.7, 1.4, 1.5, 1.4, 1.5, 1.5, 1.…
$ Petal.Width  <dbl> 0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.2, 0.1, 0.2, 0.…
$ Species      <fct> setosa, setosa, setosa, setosa, setosa, setosa, setosa, s…

A matrix can be transformed into a data.frame

A <- matrix(rnorm(10), ncol=2)
data.frame(A)

          X1         X2
1 -0.1498926 -0.2491962
2 -1.2171653 -0.2140325
3  1.6358364 -0.6700409
4  0.2633399  0.1980731
5  0.5248403  1.7719915

There are several flavors of dataframes in R: tibble and data.table are modern variants of data.frame.

t <- tibble::tibble(
  x=1:3, 
  a=letters[11:13], 
  d=Sys.Date() + 1:3)

head(t)

# A tibble: 3 × 3
      x a     d         
  <int> <chr> <date>    
1     1 k     2025-03-19
2     2 l     2025-03-20
3     3 m     2025-03-21

glimpse(t)

Rows: 3
Columns: 3
$ x <int> 1, 2, 3
$ a <chr> "k", "l", "m"
$ d <date> 2025-03-19, 2025-03-20, 2025-03-21

ref(t)

█ [1:0x601de1929c38] <tibble[,3]> 
├─x = [2:0x601de58ffd08] <int> 
├─a = [3:0x601de431c9e8] <chr> 
└─d = [4:0x601de431c268] <date>

Read Chapter on data frames and tibbles in Advanced R

Question

Perform a random permutation of the columns of a data.frame/tibble.

Function sample() from base R is very convenient

`nycflights` data

Wrestling with tables is part of the data scientist job. Out of the box data are often messy. In order to perform useful data analysis, we need tidy data. The notion of tidy data was elaborated during the last decade by experienced data scientists.

You may benefit from looking at the following online documents.

Tidy data in R for Data Science

Introduction to Table manipulation in R for Data Science in R.

More data of that kind is available following guidelines from https://github.com/hadley/nycflights13

In this exercise, you are advised to use functions from dplyr.

dplyr is a grammar of data manipulation, providing a consistent set of verbs that help you solve the most common data manipulation challenges.

data <- nycflights13::flights

Question

Have a glimpse at the data.
What is the class of object data?
What kind of object is data?

Hint: use class(), is.data.frame() tibble::is_tibble()

Question

Extract the name and the type of each column.

Compute the mean of the numerical columns

Base R has plenty of functions that perform statistical computations on univariate samples. Look at the documentation of mean (just type ?mean). For a while, leave aside the optional arguments.

In database parlance, we are performing aggregation

mean(data$dep_delay)

[1] NA

# mean(data[["dep_delay"]])

If we want the mean of all numerical columns, we need to project the data frame on numerical columns.

A verb of the summarize family can be useful.

Have a look at across in latest versions of dplyr()

Use across() from dplyr 1.x. See Documentation

If applied to a data.frame, summary(), produces a summary of each column. The summary depends on the column type. The output of summary is a shortened version the list of outputs obtained from applying summary to each column (lapply(data, summary)).

data |>
  summary()

      year          month             day           dep_time    sched_dep_time
 Min.   :2013   Min.   : 1.000   Min.   : 1.00   Min.   :   1   Min.   : 106  
 1st Qu.:2013   1st Qu.: 4.000   1st Qu.: 8.00   1st Qu.: 907   1st Qu.: 906  
 Median :2013   Median : 7.000   Median :16.00   Median :1401   Median :1359  
 Mean   :2013   Mean   : 6.549   Mean   :15.71   Mean   :1349   Mean   :1344  
 3rd Qu.:2013   3rd Qu.:10.000   3rd Qu.:23.00   3rd Qu.:1744   3rd Qu.:1729  
 Max.   :2013   Max.   :12.000   Max.   :31.00   Max.   :2400   Max.   :2359  
                                                 NA's   :8255                 
   dep_delay          arr_time    sched_arr_time   arr_delay       
 Min.   : -43.00   Min.   :   1   Min.   :   1   Min.   : -86.000  
 1st Qu.:  -5.00   1st Qu.:1104   1st Qu.:1124   1st Qu.: -17.000  
 Median :  -2.00   Median :1535   Median :1556   Median :  -5.000  
 Mean   :  12.64   Mean   :1502   Mean   :1536   Mean   :   6.895  
 3rd Qu.:  11.00   3rd Qu.:1940   3rd Qu.:1945   3rd Qu.:  14.000  
 Max.   :1301.00   Max.   :2400   Max.   :2359   Max.   :1272.000  
 NA's   :8255      NA's   :8713                  NA's   :9430      
   carrier              flight       tailnum             origin         
 Length:336776      Min.   :   1   Length:336776      Length:336776     
 Class :character   1st Qu.: 553   Class :character   Class :character  
 Mode  :character   Median :1496   Mode  :character   Mode  :character  
                    Mean   :1972                                        
                    3rd Qu.:3465                                        
                    Max.   :8500                                        
                                                                        
     dest              air_time        distance         hour      
 Length:336776      Min.   : 20.0   Min.   :  17   Min.   : 1.00  
 Class :character   1st Qu.: 82.0   1st Qu.: 502   1st Qu.: 9.00  
 Mode  :character   Median :129.0   Median : 872   Median :13.00  
                    Mean   :150.7   Mean   :1040   Mean   :13.18  
                    3rd Qu.:192.0   3rd Qu.:1389   3rd Qu.:17.00  
                    Max.   :695.0   Max.   :4983   Max.   :23.00  
                    NA's   :9430                                  
     minute        time_hour                     
 Min.   : 0.00   Min.   :2013-01-01 05:00:00.00  
 1st Qu.: 8.00   1st Qu.:2013-04-04 13:00:00.00  
 Median :29.00   Median :2013-07-03 10:00:00.00  
 Mean   :26.23   Mean   :2013-07-03 05:22:54.64  
 3rd Qu.:44.00   3rd Qu.:2013-10-01 07:00:00.00  
 Max.   :59.00   Max.   :2013-12-31 23:00:00.00

Handling NAs

We add now a few NAs to the data….

data2 <- data
data2$arr_time[1:10] <- NA

Houston, we have a problem!

Question

How should we compute the column means now?

It is time to look at optional arguments of function mean.

Question

Decide to ignore NA and to compute the mean with the available data

Question

It is possible to remove all rows that contain at least one NA.

Show this leads to a different result.

Question

Compute the minimum, the median, the mean and the maximum of numerical columns

Question

Obtain a nicer output!

Check with https://dplyr.tidyverse.org/reference/scoped.html?q=funs#arguments

Question

Mimic summary on numeric columns

Question

Compute a new itinerary column concatenating the origin and dest one.

Have a look at Section Operate on a selection of variables

Question

Compute the coefficient of variation (ratio between the standard deviation and the mean) for each itinerary. Can you find several ways?

Question

Compute for each flight the ratio between the distance and the air_time in different ways and compare the execution time (use Sys.time()).

Question

Which carrier suffers the most delay?

Puzzle

year <- 2012L

data |>
  dplyr::select(year, dest, origin) |>
  head()

# A tibble: 6 × 3
   year dest  origin
  <int> <chr> <chr> 
1  2013 IAH   EWR   
2  2013 IAH   LGA   
3  2013 MIA   JFK   
4  2013 BQN   JFK   
5  2013 ATL   LGA   
6  2013 ORD   EWR

data |>
  dplyr::filter(year==year) |>
  dplyr::summarize(n())

# A tibble: 1 × 1
   `n()`
   <int>
1 336776

data |>
  dplyr::filter(year==2012L) |>
  dplyr::summarize(n())

# A tibble: 1 × 1
  `n()`
  <int>
1     0

data |>
  dplyr::filter(year==.env$year) |>
  dplyr::summarize(n())

# A tibble: 1 × 1
  `n()`
  <int>
1     0

data |>
  dplyr::filter(year==.data$year) |>
  dplyr::summarize(n())

# A tibble: 1 × 1
   `n()`
   <int>
1 336776

Question

Can you explain what happens?

Flow control

R offers the usual flow control constructs:

branching/alternative if (...) {...} else {...}
iterations (while/for) while (...) {...} for (it in iterable) {...}
function calling callable(...) (how do we pass arguments? how do we rely on defaults?)

`If () then {} else {}`

If expressions yes_expr and no_expr are complicated it makes sense to use the if (...) {...} else {...} construct

There is also a conditional statement with an optional else {}

#| label: if-else
#| eval: false
#| collapse: false
if (condition) {
  ...
} else {
  ...
}

Question

Is there an elif construct in R?

R also offers a switch

#| label: switch
switch (object,
  case1 = {action1}, 
  case2 = {action2}, 
  ...
)

There exists a selection function ifelse(test, yes_expr, no_expr).

ifelse(test, yes, no)

Note that ifelse(...) is vectorized.

x <-  1L:6L
y <-  rep("odd", 6)
z <- rep("even", 6)

ifelse(x %% 2L, y, z)

[1] "odd"  "even" "odd"  "even" "odd"  "even"

This is a vectorized function

Iterations `for (it in iterable) {...}`

Have a look at Iteration section in R for Data Science

Question

Create a lower triangular matrix which represents the 5 first lines of the Pascal triangle.

Recall

\[\binom{n}{k} = \binom{n-1}{k-1} + \binom{n-1}{k}\]

Question

Locate the smallest element in a numerical vector

While (condition) {…}

Question

Find the location of the minimum in a vector v

Question

Write a loop that checks whether vector v is non-decreasing.

Functions

To define a function, whether named or not, you can use the function constructor.

foo <- function(arg1, arg2=def2) {
  # body

}

Question

Write a function that checks whether vector v is non-decreasing.

Question

Write a function with integer parameter \(n\), that returns the Pascal Triangle with \(n+1\) rows.

Question

How would you generate a Fibonacci sequence of length \(n\) ?

Recall the Fibonacci sequence is defined by

\[F_{n+2} = F_{n+1} + F_n \qquad F_1= F_2 = 1\]

Question

Write a function that perform binary search in a non-decreasing vector.

Read Chapter on functions in Advanced R

In R, argument evalution is surprising, powerful but taming argument evaluation is real work.

Functional programming

In R, functions are first class entities, they can be defined at run-time, they can be used as function arguments. You can define list of functions, and iterate over them.

Try to use https://purrr.tidyverse.org.

Anonymous functions

\(x) body

is a shorthand for

function (x) {
  body
}

Operators `purrr::map_???`

Question

Write truth tables for &, |, &&, ||, ! and xor

Hint: use purrr::map, function outer()

Question

Write a function that takes as input a square matrix and returns TRUE if it is lower triangular.

Question

Use map , choose and proper use of pronouns to deliver the n first lines of the Pascal triangle using one line of code.

As far as the total number of operations is concerned, would you recommend this way of computing the Pascal triangle?

Read Chapter on Functional Programming in Advanced R

Further exploration

This notebook walked you through some aspects of R and its packages. We just saw the tip of the iceberg.

We barely mentioned:

(Non-standard) Lazy evaluation
Different flavors of object oriented programming
Connection with C++: RCpp
Connection with databases: dbplyr
Building modeling pipelines: tidymodels
Concurrency
Building packages
Building interactive Apps: Shiny
Attributes (metadata)
Formulae formula
Strings stringi, stringr
Dates lubridate
and plenty other things ….

References

Readers who really want to learn R should spend time on

R for Data Science by Wickham, Çetinkaya-Rundel, and Grolemund.
Advanced R 2nd Edition by Wickham
Advanced R Solutions by Grosser and Bumann
Hands-On Programming with R by Grolemund

Don’t go without Base R cheatsheet

Packages

Numerical (atomic) vectors

Vector creation and assignment

Indexation, slicing, modification

Numbers

Integer arithmetic

Computing with vectors

Numerical matrices

Creation, transposition and reshaping

Indexation, slicing, modification

Computing with matrices

Logicals

Handling three-valued logic

all and any

Lists

Lookup tables (aka dictionaries) using named vectors

Factors

Factors nuts and bolts

Dataframes, tibbles and data.tables

nycflights data

Compute the mean of the numerical columns

Handling NAs

Puzzle

Flow control

If () then {} else {}

Iterations for (it in iterable) {...}

While (condition) {…}

Functions

Functional programming

Operators purrr::map_???

Further exploration

References

`all` and `any`

Dataframes, `tibbles` and `data.tables`

`nycflights` data

`If () then {} else {}`

Iterations `for (it in iterable) {...}`

Operators `purrr::map_???`