FUNCTIONS FOR EXPLORING A DATAFRAME IN R

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The data are stored in dataframes in R. Dataframes are capable of storing different types of data.

Dataset Used: The default dataset available in datasets package named ‘quakes‘ which gives the locations of Earthquakes in Fiji

This dataframe contains 1000 observations on 5 numerical variables.

[,1]         lat                           numeric               Latitude of event

[,2]         long                       numeric               Longitude

[,3]         depth                    numeric               Depth (km)

[,4]         mag                       numeric               Richter Magnitude

[,5]         stations                numeric               Number of stations reporting

Lets start exploring,

To view the dataframe in a spreadsheet format

> View(quakes)

The dimension of the dataframe can be obtained using the dim() which gives a vector as its output:

> dim(quakes)

[1] 1000    5

The detailed description and structure of the objects in the dataframe can be obtained using str()

> str(quakes)

‘data.frame’:      1000 obs. of  5 variables:

$ lat        : num  -20.4 -20.6 -26 -18 -20.4 …

$ long     : num  182 181 184 182 182 …

$ depth   : int  562 650 42 626 649 195 82 194 211 622 …

$ mag      : num  4.8 4.2 5.4 4.1 4 4 4.8 4.4 4.7 4.3 …

$ stations: int  41 15 43 19 11 12 43 15 35 19 …

The number of rows and columns can be obtained using the nrow() and ncol()

> nrow(quakes)

[1] 1000

> ncol(quakes)

[1] 5

The first n observations in the dataframe can be displayed using the head()

> head(quakes)

———-lat      long    depth    mag       stations

1       -20.42    181.62   562         4.8          41

2       -20.62    181.03   650        4.2          15

3       -26.00    184.10    42         5.4          43

4       -17.97    181.66   626         4.1          19

5       -20.42    181.96   649        4.0          11

6       -19.68    184.31   195          4.0          12

Note: If you need only first 3 observations, then specify that in the function

> head(quakes,3)

 ———-lat         long       depth    mag       stations

1       -20.42    181.62     562         4.8          41

2       -20.62    181.03     650         4.2          15

3       -26.00    184.10      42          5.4          43

The last n observations can be displayed using the tail()

> tail(quakes)

———-lat         long     depth      mag       stations

995  -17.70    188.10     45             4.2          10

996  -25.93    179.54    470           4.4          22

997  -12.28    167.06    248           4.7          35

998  -20.13    184.20    244           4.5          34

999  -17.40    187.80     40            4.5          14

1000-21.59    170.56    165            6.0          119

Note: If you need only last 3 observations, then specify that in the function

> tail(quakes,3)

———–lat       long       depth     mag       stations

998  -20.13    184.20       244         4.5          34

999  -17.40    187.80        40          4.5          14

1000-21.59    170.56        165         6.0          119

To get the column headers, use the names()

> names(quakes)

[1] “lat”      “long”     “depth”    “mag”      “stations”

To get the number of NA values in a dataframe,

> apply(quakes,2,function(x) sum(is.na(x)))

lat     long    depth      mag    stations

0          0          0               0            0

The result summary can be displayed with the help of the summary()

> summary(quakes)

——lat                        long                     depth                      mag                      stations

Min.     :-38.59      Min.     :165.7     Min.     : 40.0       Min.     :4.00        Min.     : 10.00

1st Qu. :-23.47     1st Qu.  :179.6    1st Qu. : 99.0       1st Qu. :4.30        1st Qu.  : 18.00

Median:-20.30     Median:181.4     Median:247.0     Median:4.60        Median: 27.00

Mean   :-20.64     Mean    :179.5     Mean    :311.4      Mean    :4.62        Mean    : 33.42

3rd Qu.:-17.64     3rd Qu. :183.2     3rd Qu. :543.0     3rd Qu. :4.90       3rd Qu. : 42.00

Max.     :-10.72     Max.     :188.1     Max.     :680.0     Max.     :6.40        Max.     :132.00

To plot a graph between Latitude vs Longitude based on the Richter scale magnitudes

library(ggplot2)

qplot(data = quakes, x = lat, y = long, size = exp(mag), color = mag)

quakes-plot21111


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