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From spreadsheet thinking to R thinking

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Towards the basic R mindset.

Previously

The post “A first step towards R from spreadsheets” provides an introduction to switching from spreadsheets to R.  It also includes a list of additional posts (like this one) on the transition.

Add two columns

Figure 1 shows some numbers in two columns and the start of adding those two columns to each other in a third column.

Figure 1: Adding two columns in a spreadsheet. 

The next step is to fill the addition formula down the column.

It is not so different to do the same thing in R.  First create two objects that are equivalent to the two columns in the spreadsheet:

A <- c(32.5, -3.8, 15.9, 22.5)
B <- c(48.1, 19.4, 46.8, 14.7)

In those commands you used the c function which combines objects.  You have created two vectors.  The rules for a vector are:

To summarize: they’re in little boxes and they all look just the same.

You have two R vectors holding your numbers.  Now just add them together (and assign that value into a third name):

C <- A + B

This addition is precisely what is done in the spreadsheet: the first value in C is the first value in A plus the first value in B, the second value in C is the second value in A plus the second value in B, and so on.

See the values in an object by typing its name:

> C
[1] 80.6 15.6 62.7 37.2

The “> ” is the R prompt, you type only what is after that: ‘C‘ (and the return or enter key).

Also note that R is case-sensitive – C and c are different things:

> c
function (..., recursive = FALSE)  .Primitive("c")

(Don’t try to make sense of what this means other than that c is a function.)

Multiply by a constant

One way of multiplying a column by a constant is to multiply the values in the column by the value in a single cell.  This is illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Multiply a column times the value in a single cell, shown before filling down column E. 

Another way of doing the same thing is to fill the value in D1 down column D and then multiply the two columns.

Do this operation in R with:

> C * 33
[1] 2659.8  514.8 2069.1 1227.6

In this command you didn’t create a new object to hold the answer.

You can think of R as doing either of the spreadsheet methods, but the fill-down image might be slightly preferable.

Recycling in R

The R recycling rule generalizes the idea of a single value expanding to the length of the vector.  It is possible to do operations with vectors of different lengths where both have more than one element:

> 1:6 + c(100, 200)
[1] 101 202 103 204 105 206

Figure 3 illustrates how R got to its answer.

Figure 3: Equivalent of the example of R’s recycling rule. 

Column F shows how column G was created: use the ROW function and fill it down the column.  That sequence of numbers was created in R with the `:` operator.

Note how the shorter vector is replicated to the length of the longer one.  Each value is used in order, and when it reaches the end it goes back to the beginning again.

You are free to think this is weird.  However, it is often useful.

Functions

Table 1 translates between spreadsheet and R functions. The spreadsheets consulted were Excel, Works and OpenOffice. Note there is some variation between spreadsheets.

Table 1: Equivalent functions between spreadsheets and R.

spreadsheet R comment
ABS abs
ADDRESS perhaps assign but there is probably a better way
AND all more literally would be the & and && R operators
AVERAGE mean danger: mean accepts only one data argument
AVG mean this danger of mean is discussed in Circle 3 of The R Inferno
AVERAGEIF subscript before using mean
BESSELI besselI
BESSELJ besselJ
BESSELK besselK
BESSELY besselY
BETADIST pbeta
BETAINV qbeta
BINOMDIST pbinom or dbinom pbinom when cumulative, dbinom when not
CEILING ceiling
CELL str is sort of the same idea
CHIDIST pchisq CHIDIST(x, df) is pchisq(x, df, lower.tail=FALSE)
CHIINV qchisq CHIINV(p, df) is qchisq(1-p, df)
CHISQDIST pchisq or dchisq pchisq when cumulative, dchisq when not
CHISQINV qchisq
CHITEST chisq.test
CHOOSE switch
CLEAN gsub
COLS ncol (Works)
COLUMNS ncol (Excel, OpenOffice)
COLUMN col or probably more likely : or seq
COMBIN choose
CONCATENATE paste
CONFIDENCE CONFIDENCE(alpha, std, n) is -qnorm(alpha/2) * std / sqrt(n)
CORREL cor
COUNT length
COUNTIF get length of a subscripted object
COVAR cov
CRITBINOM qbinom CRITBINOM(n, p, a) is qbinom(a, n, p)
DELTA all.equal or identical all.equal allows for slight differences, and note that it does not return a logical if there’s a pertinent difference — you can wrap it in isTRUE if you want
DGET use subscripting in R
ERF see the example in ?"Normal"
ERFC see the example in ?"Normal"
EXACT == EXACT is specific to text, == is not
EXP exp
EXPONDIST pexp or dexp pexp when cumulative, dexp when not
FACT factorial
FACTDOUBLE dfactorial dfactorial is in the phangorn package
FDIST pf FDIST(x, df1, df2) is pf(x, df1, df2, lower.tail=FALSE)
FIND regexpr
FINV qf FINV(p, df1, df2) is qf(1-p, df1, df2)
FISHER atanh
FISHERINV tanh
FIXED format or sprintf or formatC
FLOOR floor
FORECAST predict on an lm object
FREQUENCY you probably want to use cut and/or table
FTEST var.test
GAMMADIST pgamma or dgamma GAMMADIST(x, a, b, TRUE) is pgamma(x, a, scale=b) GAMMADIST(x, a, b, FALSE) is dgamma(x, a, scale=b)
GAMMAINV qgamma GAMMAINV(p, a, b) is qgamma(p, a, scale=b)
GAMMALN lgamma
GAUSS GAUSS(x) is pnorm(x) - 0.5
GCD gcd gcd is in the schoolmath package (and others). For more than two numbers you can do: Reduce(gcd, numVector)
GEOMEAN exp(mean(log(x)))
GESTEP >= GESTEP(x, y) is as.numeric(x >= y) but R often coerces automatically if needed
HARMEAN harmonic.mean harmonic.mean is in the psych package
HLOOKUP use subscripting in R
HYPGEOMDIST dhyper HYPGEOMDIST(x, a, b, n) is dhyper(x, b, n-b, a)
IF if or ifelse see Circle 3.2 of The R Inferno on if versus ifelse
IFERROR try or tryCatch
INDEX [ use subscripting in R
INDIRECT get or possibly the eval-parse-text idiom, or (better) make changes that simplify the situation
INT floor danger: not the same as as.integer for negative numbers
INTERCEPT (usually) the first element of coef of an lm object
ISLOGICAL is.logical
ISNUMBER is.numeric
ISTEXT is.character
KURT kurtosis kurtosis is in the moments package
LARGE you can use subscripting after sort
LCM scm scm is in the schoolmath package. For more than two numbers you can do: Reduce(scm, numVector)
LEFT substr
LEN nchar (Excel, OpenOffice)
LENGTH nchar (Works)
LINEST use lm
LN log danger: the default base in R for log is e
LOG log danger: the default base in spreadsheets for log is 10
LOG10 log10
LOGINV qlnorm
LOGNORMDIST plnorm
LOWER tolower
MATCH match or which match only does exact matches. Given that MATCH demands a sorted set of values for type 1 or -1, then MATCH(x, vec, 1) is sum(x <= vec) and MATCH(x, vec, -1) is sum(x >= vec) when vec is sorted as MATCH assumes.
MAX max or pmax max returns one value, pmax returns a vector
MDETERM det
MEDIAN median
MID substr
MIN min or pmin min returns one value, pmin returns a vector
MINVERSE solve
MMULT %*%
MOD %%
MODE the table function does the hard part. A crude approximation to MODE(x) is as.numeric(names(which.max(table(x))))
MUNIT diag diag is much more general
N as.numeric the correspondence is for logicals, as.numeric is more general
NEGBINOMDIST dnbinom
NORMDIST, NORMSDIST pnorm or dnorm pnorm when cumulative is true, dnorm when false
NORMINV, NORMSINV qnorm
NOT !
NOW date or Sys.time
OR any the or operators in R are | and ||
PEARSON cor
PERCENTILE quantile
PERCENTRANK similar to ecdf but the argument is removed from the distribution in PERCENTRANK
PERMUT function(n,k) {choose(n,k) * factorial(k)}
PERMUTATIONA PERMUTATIONA(n, k) is n^k
PHI dnorm
POISSON ppois or dpois ppois if cumulative, dpois if not
POWER ^
PROB you can use the Ecdf function in the Hmisc package (the probabilities in the spreadsheet are the weights in Ecdf), then you can get the difference of that on the two limits
PRODUCT prod
PROPER see example in ?toupper
QUARTILE use quantile
QUOTIENT %/%
RAND runif see an introduction to random generation in R
RANDBETWEEN use sample
RANK rank RANK has the "min" tie.method and defaults to biggest first.
rank only has smallest first. To get biggest first in R you can do: length(x) + 1 - rank(x)
REPLACE sub or gsub
REPT use rep and paste or paste0
RIGHT substring you’ll also need nchar to count the characters. Alternatively you can use str_sub in the stringr package with negative limits
ROUND round note: round rounds exact halves to even (which avoids bias)
ROUNDDOWN trunc trunc only goes to integers
ROW row or probably more likely : or seq
ROWS nrow
RSQ in summary of an lm object
SEARCH regexpr also see grep
SIGN sign
SKEW skewness skewness is in the moments package
SLOPE in coef of an lm object
SMALL you can use subscripting after sort
SQRT sqrt
STANDARDIZE scale
STD sd (Works)
STDEV sd (Excel, OpenOffice)
STEYX predict on an lm object
STRING format or sprintf or formatC or prettyNum (Works)
SUBSTITUTE sub or gsub or possibly paste
SUM sum sum is one of the few R functions that allow multiple data arguments
SUMIF subscript before using sum
SUMPRODUCT crossprod
TDIST pt TDIST(abs(x), df, tails) is pt(-abs(x), df) * tails
TEXT format or sprintf or formatC or prettyNum
TINV TINV(x, df) is abs(qt(x/2, df))
TODAY Sys.Date
TRANSPOSE t
TREND fitted of an lm object
TRIM sub
TRIMMEAN mean TRIMMEAN(x, tr) is mean(x, trim=tr/2)
TRUNC trunc
TTEST t.test
TYPE similar concepts in R are typeof, mode, class. Use str to understand the structure of objects
UPPER toupper
VALUE as.numeric
VAR var
VLOOKUP use subscripting in R
WEEKDAY weekdays
WEIBULL pweibull or dweibull pweibull when cumulative, dweibull when not
ZTEST use pnorm on the calculated statistic

The trigonometric functions, like cos, acos, acosh are the same, except the R functions are all in lowercase.

Arguments

Spreadsheets show you the arguments of a function.  The args function in R provides similar information.  For example:

> args(sample)
function (x, size, replace = FALSE, prob = NULL) 
NULL

This shows that replace and prob both have default values, and so are not required.  Actually size is not required either — x is the only mandatory argument.

You will learn to not even see the NULL on the final line of the result of args.

Help

You can get help for a function with the question mark operator:

?sample

This will show you the help file for the object — sample in this case.  It is best not to let yourself be overwhelmed by a help file.

R vectorization

Most of the R functions are vectorized.

This is like creating a new spreadsheet column where an argument of the function is a value from the same row but a different column.  Think of putting =EXP(A1) in cell B1 and then filling it down.

Figure 4: EXP example of the vectorization idea, shown before column K is filled down. 

Giving a vector to exp returns the exponential of each of the values in the input vector:

> exp(0:5)
[1]   1.000000   2.718282   7.389056  20.085537
[5]  54.598150 148.413159

The result is a vector of length 6 — the same length as the input. The number in square brackets at the start of each line of output is the index number of the first item on the line.

Some R resources

“Impatient R” provides a grounding in how to use R.

“Some hints for the R beginner” suggests additional ways to learn R.

Epilogue

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

from “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds (1900 – 1978)

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