BIA 5303 Big Data 2
Module 3
R Programming Reference:
Tilman M. Davis, The Book of R,
Objectives no starch press, 2016
✓ Handling NA values in data sets.
✓ Use input and formatted output in R scripts.
✓ Apply conditions in R using if statements.
✓ Use switch function to implement multi-path selection in a compact way.
Lecturer
✓ Implement loops in R using for, while, and repeat statements. Anas Kuzechie
NA
✓ In statistical analyses, data sets often contain missing values.
✓ Identifying and handling missing values is important so that we can still use the
rest of the data.
✓ R provides a standard special term to represent missing values, NA, which reads as
Not Available.
✓ We can identify NA elements using the function [Link](). This is useful for
removing or replacing NA values.
✓ We can also use which() function to extract the indexes of NA values.
✓ Function [Link]() will take a variable and delete all NAs from it.
Exercise
✓ Consider the Ozone variable of data frame airquality. The variable contains
37 NAs out of 153 values.
✓ Determine the NAs in Ozone.
✓ Determine the index position of the NAs.
Exercise
Logical error! NA is returned if
✓ Find the average ozone: variable contains NAs.
Logical operator NOT.
Exclude NAs from computation.
✓ Create a vector that contains all the values of variable Ozone for the month of
May. Exclude all NAs:
5 NA values.
Input & Output
✓ readlin() function enables the script to read from the console.
✓ cat() function (concatenate and print) enables the script to output to the console.
format() function enables the
output value to be formatted.
✓ Example
casting string to integer
✓ We could also use the print() function and the
paste() function to display text and values.
if Function
✓ Syntax:
✓ Example R script that checks if a person's age is greater or equal to 18.
if-else Statement
✓ Syntax:
Note the
location of else
if-else if-else Statement
✓ Syntax:
✓ Example
ifelse Function
✓ ifelse() is a conditional function in R that allows us to perform element-wise
conditional operations on vectors or data frames.
✓ Syntax: ifelse(test_expression, x, y)
✓ Examples
✓ Exercise With reference to airquality data frame and Wind variable for the month
of May, generate a vector having element values "WINDY" if the wind speed is
greater than 15 mph. Otherwise, set "Not windy" value.
Exercise
switch Function
✓ The switch() function tests an expression against elements of a list. If the value
evaluated from the expression matches an item from the list, the corresponding
value is returned.
✓ Syntax: switch(expression, list)
✓ Examples
for Loop
✓ Syntax:
✓ Example
✓ Nested loops:
Exercise
✓ Using a for loop, Write an R script to calculate the average wind speed in May for
data frame airquality.
✓ Repeat the above for variable Ozone.
Exercise
✓ Write a script to create the matrix
shown in the figure.
✓ Next, using a nested for loop, the script
computes and displays the average grade
of each student (see output).
while Loop
✓ Syntax:
✓ Examples
break and next Statements
✓ break statement forces an exit from the loop.
✓ next statement forces code to jump to loop head to continue with next iteration.
repeat Statement
✓ Syntax: