Lab 1.

Introduction to R (Getting Started)

Principles of Statistics

MAT2022, Hanyang University, Spring 2025

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A first R session

x <- c(1,2,4)
x[2:3]

## [1] 2 4
▶ < − or =: standard assignment operator

▶ No fixed type associated with variables

▶ c: concatenate

▶ x[2 : 3] (subsetting): subvector of x consisting of elements 2

through 3, which are 2 and 4 here

Note: Any number is also considered to be a one-element vector.

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x <- c(1,2,4)
q <- c(x,x,8)
q

## [1] 1 2 4 1 2 4 8
▶ Set q to (1, 2, 4, 1, 2, 4, 8) including the duplicates

▶ q: to print the vector to the screen, simply type its name

Note: If you type any variable name (or any expression) while in
interactive mode, R will print out the value of that variable (or
expression).

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Summary statistics

▶ Mean, standard deviation, and other summary statistics of our

data set

c(mean(x),sd(x))
## [1] 2.333333 1.527525
summary(x)
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.333 3.000 4.000

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Comments

▶ Save the computed mean in a variable

▶ Use # to write comments

y <- mean(x); y1 <- c(mean(x),sd(x))

y # print out y
## [1] 2.333333
y1
## [1] 2.333333 1.527525

Note: Comments are valuable for documenting program code and

help you to remember what you were doing.

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Internal data sets

data()

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# Nile data set (including the flow of the Nile River)
c(mean(Nile),sd(Nile))

## [1] 919.3500 169.2275

plot(Nile)
1400
1200
1000
Nile

800
600

1880 1900 1920 1940 1960

Time

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 ▶ Plot a histogram of the data (bare-bones simple)

▶ All kind of optional bells and whistles for plotting

hist(Nile)

Histogram of Nile
25
20
15
Frequency

10
5
0

400 600 800 1000 1200 1400

Nile

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Quit R

▶ Quit R by calling the q() function

▶ Pressing CTRL-D in Linux or CMD-D on a Mac

q()

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Introduction to Functions

▶ The heart of R programming consists of writing functions.

▶ A function is a group of instructions that takes inputs, uses

them to compute other values, and returns a result.

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Simple example: counting the odd numbers

# counts the number of odd integers in x

oddcount <- function(x) {
k <- 0 # assign 0 to k
for (n in x) {
if (n %% 2 == 1) k <- k+1
# %% is the modulo operator
}
return(k)
}

oddcount(c(1,1.5,3,7,10,11,12,15))
## [1] 5

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 ▶ Guess what happens with the following code:

k <- 0; x <- c(1,1.5,3,7,10,11,12,15)

# 1
for (n in x){
if (n %% 2 == 1) k <- k+1
}

1. Set n to x[1], and then tests that value for being odd or not

2. If the value is odd, the count variable k is incremented.

3. Then n is set to x[2], tested for being odd or not, and so on.

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 ▶ The following code would also work (unless x have length 0).

k <- 0; x <- c(1,1.5,3,7,10,11,12,15)

# 2
for (i in 1:length(x)){
# length(x): the number of elements in x
if (x[i] %% 2 == 1) k <- k+1
}

Note: One of the major themes of R programming is to avoid loops

if possible; if not, keep loops simple.

The formulation 1 do not need to resort to using the length(x)

function and array indexing.

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return(k) # or simple k

## [1] 5

▶ The function returns the computed value of k to the code that

called it.

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Formal or actual argument

In programming terminology,
▶ x is the formal argument (or formal parameter) of the
function oddcount().
Here, x is just a placeholder in the function defined
▶ c(1, 1.5, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15) in the first function call is the
actual argument.
c(1, 1.5, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15) is the value actually used in the
computation

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Variable scope (local and global)

▶ A variable that is visible only within a function body is said to

be local to that function.
In oddcount(), k and n are local variables because they
disappear after the function returns.

oddcount(c(1,5,2,100,3,99))
## [1] 4
> n
Error: object 'n' not found

Note: The formal parameters in an R function are local variables.

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 ▶ Variable created outside function are global and are available
within functions as well.

f <- function(x) return(x+y)

> f(5)
Error in f(5) : object 'y' not found
y <- 3
f(5)

## [1] 8
Here y is global variable.

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Defualt arguments

> g <- function(x, y=2, z=T){ ... }

▶ y will be initialized to 2 if we do not specify y in the call.
▶ z will have the default value TRUE.

> g(12, z=FALSE)

▶ The value 12 is for x, and we accept the default value of 2 for
y.
▶ But, we override the default for z, setting it to FALSE.
▶ R has a Boolean type; has the logical values TRUE and FALSE.

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Preview of data structures

▶ R has a variety of data structures.

▶ The vector type is really the heart of R.

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Scalars (or individual numbers)

▶ Do not really exist in R

▶ Individual numbers are actually one-element vectors.

x <- 8
x
## [1] 8

Note: The [1] here signifies that the following row of numbers
begins with element 1 of a vector. R was indeed treating x as a
vector, albeit a vector with just one element.

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Character Strings

▶ Single-element vectors of mode character

x <- c(9,8,2022)
c(length(x),mode(x))
## [1] "3" "numeric"
z <- c("HYU","Stat","29 88")
c(length(z),mode(z))
## [1] "3" "character"

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 ▶ R has various string-manipulation functions.

▶ Many deal with putting strings together or taking them apart,

such as the two shown here:

# concatenate the strings

u <- paste("spatial","statistic","s")
u

## [1] "spatial statistic s"

# split the string according to blanks
v <- strsplit(u," ")
v

## [[1]]
## [1] "spatial" "statistic" "s"

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Matrices

▶ An R matrix corresponds to the mathematical concept of the

same name: a rectangular array of numbers.

m <- rbind(c(9,4),c(1,5))
m
## [,1] [,2]
## [1,] 9 4
## [2,] 1 5
m %*% c(1,2)
## [,1]
## [1,] 17
## [2,] 11

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 ▶ An useful feature of R is that you can extract submatrices from
a matrix, much as you extract subvectors from vectors.

m[1,] # row 1

## [1] 9 4
m[,2] # column 2

## [1] 4 5

Note: Matrices are indexed using double subscripting, much as in

C/C++, although subscripts start at 1 instead of 0.

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Lists

▶ An R list is a container for values, but its contents can be

items of different data types.
▶ List elements are accessed using two-part names, which are
indicated with the dollar sign $ in R.

x <- list(u=2022, v="HYU")

x
## $u
## [1] 2022
##
## $v
## [1] "HYU"

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 ▶ A common use of lists is to combine multiple values into a
single package that can be returned by a function.
hn <- hist(Nile)

Histogram of Nile
25
20
15
Frequency

10
5
0

400 600 800 1000 1200 1400

Nile

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print(hn)

## $breaks
## [1] 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400
##
## $counts
## [1] 1 0 5 20 25 19 12 11 6 1
##
## $density
## [1] 0.0001 0.0000 0.0005 0.0020 0.0025 0.0019 0.0012 0.0011 0.0006 0
##
## $mids
## [1] 450 550 650 750 850 950 1050 1150 1250 1350
##
## $xname
## [1] "Nile"
##
## $equidist
## [1] TRUE
##
## attr(,"class")
## [1] "histogram"

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str(hn)

## List of 6
## $ breaks : int [1:11] 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 .
## $ counts : int [1:10] 1 0 5 20 25 19 12 11 6 1
## $ density : num [1:10] 0.0001 0 0.0005 0.002 0.0025 0.0019 0.0012 0.
## $ mids : num [1:10] 450 550 650 750 850 950 1050 1150 1250 1350
## $ xname : chr "Nile"
## $ equidist: logi TRUE
## - attr(*, "class")= chr "histogram"

Note: Here str stands for structure. This function shows the
internal structure of any R object, not just lists.

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Data Frames

▶ A data frame in R is a list, with each component of the list

being a vector corresponding to a column in our "matrix" of
data.
d <- data.frame(departments=c("Mathematics","Statistics",
"Computer Science and Engineering"),
codes=c("MAT","STS","CSE"), num_facs=c(20,5,30))
d
## departments codes num_facs
## 1 Mathematics MAT 20
## 2 Statistics STS 5
## 3 Computer Science and Engineering CSE 30
d$codes
## [1] "MAT" "STS" "CSE"

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Classes

▶ R is an object-oriented language.

▶ Objects are instances of classes.

▶ Classes are a bit more abstract than the data types, and we will
skip the concept.

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Getting Help

A plethora of resources are available to help you learn more about R.

These include several facilities within R itself and, of course, on the

Web.

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The help() Fucntion

▶ To get online help, invoke help(), e.g., to get information on

the rep() or seq() function, type this:

help(rep) # or ?repeat
help(seq) # or ?seq

Note: Special characters and some reserved words must be quoted

when used with the help() function.
?"for"
?"<"

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The example() Function

▶ Each of the help entries comes with examples.

▶ One nice feature of R is that the example() function will
actually run those examples for you.
> example(seq)
▶ The seq() function generates various kinds of numeric
sequences in arithmetic progression.
▶ A series of sample graphs for the persp() function can be
displayed.
> example(persp)

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The help.search() Function

▶ Use the function help.search() to do a Google-style search

through R’s documentation.

help.search("multivariate normal")

??"multivariate normal"

▶ See that the function mvrnorm() will do the job, and it is in

the package MASS.

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Help on the Internet

There are many excellent resources on R on the Internet.

▶ The R Project’s own manuals are available from the R home
page: http:/www.r-project.org/.
▶ The RSeek search engine: http://www.rseek.org/.

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Reference

▶ Matloff, N. The Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical

Software Design. No Starch Press. Chapter 1.

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