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R Functions for Distributions and Iterations

The document provides an introduction to R programming, focusing on generating observations from various statistical distributions and performing iterations using loops. It explains the use of specific functions for distributions, such as d, p, q, and r, and demonstrates how to write custom functions, including one for standardizing a vector. Examples are provided for generating random observations and calculating sums using both for and while loops.

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Lam Ha
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10 views3 pages

R Functions for Distributions and Iterations

The document provides an introduction to R programming, focusing on generating observations from various statistical distributions and performing iterations using loops. It explains the use of specific functions for distributions, such as d, p, q, and r, and demonstrates how to write custom functions, including one for standardizing a vector. Examples are provided for generating random observations and calculating sums using both for and while loops.

Uploaded by

Lam Ha
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Introduction to R Part II

Wanhua Su

9/20/2022

1 Generate Observations from a Given Distribution


R has four types of functions for getting information about a family of distributions.

(1) d function: return the pdf of the distribution;


(2) p function: return the cdf of the distribution;
(3) q function: return the quantiles;

(4) r function: return random observations.

The distribution names are:

(1) binomial distribution: binom

(2) poisson distribution: pois


(3) normal distribution: norm
(4) t-distribution: t

(5) F-distribution: F
(6) χ2 -distribution: chisq
(7) gamma distribution: gamma

Combine the four functions to each name, then get the four functions for each distribution.
To generate observations from a distribution, use r followed by the function name.

rnorm(2,70,10) #2 observations from N(70,10)

## [1] 73.21697 74.41896

rt(3,15) #3 observations from t with df=15

## [1] 0.3076063 1.4470862 -0.5591743

1
2 Iterations in R
Similar to other languages, we can run iterations in R using for loop and while loop.

1) Print 1 to 5 using for loop and while loop

for (i in 1:5) cat("i=",i,"\n")

## i= 1
## i= 2
## i= 3
## i= 4
## i= 5

i=0
while (i<5){
i=i+1
cat("i=",i,"\n")
}

## i= 1
## i= 2
## i= 3
## i= 4
## i= 5

2) Calculate the sum of 1 to 5 using a for loop and while loop.

sum=0
for (i in 1:5) sum=sum+i
sum

## [1] 15

sum=0
i=0
while (i<5){
i=i+1
sum=sum+i
}
sum

## [1] 15

3 Write Your Own Function


We sometimes need to write our own function. For example, Write a function to standardize a vector to
have mean 0 and variance 1.

2
std=function(x){
#function to standardize a vector
#input: a vector
#output: a vector has mean 0 and variance 1
m=mean(x)
s=sqrt(var(x))
result=(x-m)/s
return(result)
}

We can try our function and compare the result with the one given by the built-in R function.

x=1:5 #generate a vector of 1 to 5


y=std(x) #apply the function
y

## [1] -1.2649111 -0.6324555 0.0000000 0.6324555 1.2649111

c(mean(y),var(y)) #get the mean and variance of the standardized vector

## [1] 0 1

(obj=scale(x)) #built-in function

## [,1]
## [1,] -1.2649111
## [2,] -0.6324555
## [3,] 0.0000000
## [4,] 0.6324555
## [5,] 1.2649111
## attr(,"scaled:center")
## [1] 3
## attr(,"scaled:scale")
## [1] 1.581139

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