# Chapter 10 The Building Blocks of R: data types, data structures, functions, and packages.

In this chapter, we will learn about some critical building blocks in R that can lead to a lot of frustration if you do not understand these building blocks and how they are used. Once you understand how these building blocks work, you will be able to avoid these frustrations and build some pretty amazing data analysis pipelines.

## 10.1 Data Types

There are actually six data types in R, though we usually use only use 4 of these for data analysis.

• logical (TRUE or FALSE)

• integer (1L, 2L) - these take up less memory than a double. You specify a number as an integer (rather than a double) by adding a capital L after the number.

• double (aka real or decimal - 2.4, 4.7, pi). Double means that the value is stored in 64 bits (aka double precision)

• note that both integers and doubles have the class of numeric
• character (“myeloma” or “michigan”)

• complex ( 1+3i, 4-7i) - used under the hood for calculations

• raw (hexadecimal codes like B3 or FF) - used to communicate with devices like printers

Note that there is not a true data type for categorical variables, like gender, or race, or ethnicity. These are encoded as factors, which behave mostly like a data type, but are technically a data class. For the purposes of dataframes, factors can be thought of as the 5th data type, but the result of typeof() on a factor variable will be “integer”, as that is how factors are stored, with text attributes for the level names.

Note also that there is not a true data type for dates, or date:times, as these are stored as doubles in R. Their typeof() will be double, but their class() will be date or dttm. Storing these as doubles does make it easier to do math to calculate intervals of time.

Note that you can test the type of an object in R with the typeof() function, which will return the data type.

You can also test for a specific data type - is this the right kind of input, with the is.x functions, like is.character(), is.logical(), or is.numeric(). These will return the logical values TRUE or FALSE. This can be important, as many functions will report (or “throw”) an error when they receive the wrong kind of input data.

When needed, you can also convert between data types, by manually coercing an object to a different data type with the as.x functions, like as.character(), as.logical(), as.integer(), or as.numeric() [as.double() ~~ as.numeric()].

Here are 4 examples of testing vectors with the typeof() function. Guess what the returned value will be before you run the code (click on the green arrow at the top right).

# you can test vectors with typeof

typeof(c(1.7,5.3,9.2)) 
[1] "double"
typeof(c('hypertension', "diabetes", "atherosclerosis"))
[1] "character"
typeof(c(2L, 4L))
[1] "integer"
typeof(c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE))
[1] "logical"
table(InsectSprays$spray)  A B C D E F 12 12 12 12 12 12  typeof(InsectSprays$spray)
[1] "integer"

Here are 3 examples of coverting vectors from one type to another with as.x() functions. Guess what the returned value will be before you run the code (click on the green arrow at the top right).

# you can convert vectors with as.x

numeric <- (c(1.7,5.3,9.2))
newvec1 <- as.character(numeric)
newvec1
[1] "1.7" "5.3" "9.2"
typeof(newvec1)
[1] "character"
logical <- c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE)
newvec2 <- as.integer(logical)
newvec2
[1] 1 0 1
typeof(newvec2)
[1] "integer"
character <- c("2.4", "5.3", "7.2")
newvec3 <- as.numeric(character)
newvec3
[1] 2.4 5.3 7.2
typeof(newvec3)
[1] "double"

## 10.2 Data Structures

Data structures are the nouns of programming in R. The data items of different types are organized into data structures. R has many data structures, and these include

• vector - the most common and basic data structure in R. Most functions in R operate on vectors. These vectorized functions act on every item in the vector, without you having to write a loop. Every item in a vector must be of the same data type. If the items added to a vector are of different data types, they will be silently and automatically coerced to a common data type. Sometimes this is helpful, but sometimes it can surprise you.

<Demo> constructing vectors with concatenate, recycling of values, seq and seqalong, length (vs nchar). Use letters and LETTERS - two built in vectors in base R.

Automatic coercion can be a common source of problems, especially for beginners. R tries to “helpfully” convert vectors from more specific types to more general types automatically and silently when you have mixed data types in a vector/variable column. Imagine you have a numeric vector of potassium values, like
k <- c(4.2, 3.9, 4.5, 4.3, 4.1)
This is fine. k is a numeric class vector, with typeof(k) = double.
But if the next value from the lab comes back as “sample lysed”,
k <- c(4.2, 3.9, 4.5, 4.3, 4.1. “sample lysed”),
R will automatically and silently convert this vector to a more general class and type (“character”)
The ordering of coercion (from more specific to more general) is:
logical -> integer -> numeric -> character -> list
Watch out for:
data of the wrong type in your variable vectors, and
silent changing of your data type - check your variable data types with glimpse() before you dive into data analysis.

• factors - factors are special vectors used for categorical data. These factors can be ordinal or nominal (unordered), and are important in lots of clinical data, and for modeling or plotting different categories. Factors are essentially integers with special labels (levels) attached. Factors can look like character vectors, but are actually stored as integers, which sometimes leads to unfortunate surprises.

• matrix - a matrix is a special case of a vector in R. A matrix must also have only a single data type, and has 2 dimensions. The matrix is filled with values by column as the default, and recycles values if needed. Matrices are often used for gene expression arrays and Omics applications to store lots of numeric results. Matrices are also often used “under the hood” for complex calculations, in the linear algebra used to fit many models.

<Demo matrix letters, nrow=2 vs nrow =6, dim(), matrix(letters, nrow=13), matrix(letters, nrow=2)

• list - a list is an all-purpose container for a variety of data types and vectors of any length. Lists are often heterogeneous in both data types and the length of vectors. Lists can even contain other lists. Lists are helpful when you have a related group of heterogeneous objects as results - vectors, dataframes, strings, etc., which can be bundled together in a list.

One example of a list occurs in the starwars dataset, which has a row for each character. The column for which films they have appeared in is a list column. Each cell contains a character vectors of varying length, as each character has appeared in anywhere from 1 to 9 movies (as of 2021).

starwars %>% select(name, films) 
# A tibble: 87 × 2
name               films
<chr>              <list>
1 Luke Skywalker     <chr [5]>
2 C-3PO              <chr [6]>
3 R2-D2              <chr [7]>
5 Leia Organa        <chr [5]>
6 Owen Lars          <chr [3]>
7 Beru Whitesun lars <chr [3]>
8 R5-D4              <chr [1]>
9 Biggs Darklighter  <chr [1]>
10 Obi-Wan Kenobi     <chr [6]>
# … with 77 more rows
starwars$films %>% head() [[1]] [1] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" [3] "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" [5] "The Force Awakens" [[2]] [1] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" [3] "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" [5] "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" [[3]] [1] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" [3] "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" [5] "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" [7] "The Force Awakens" [[4]] [1] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" [3] "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" [[5]] [1] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" [3] "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" [5] "The Force Awakens" [[6]] [1] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" [3] "A New Hope"  Lists can be a bit clunky to work with, as they nest more than a single value into a single cell. Sometimes this nested format can be helpful, and sometimes it is preferable to unnest() the data into a longer format. starwars %>% select(name, films) # A tibble: 87 × 2 name films <chr> <list> 1 Luke Skywalker <chr [5]> 2 C-3PO <chr [6]> 3 R2-D2 <chr [7]> 4 Darth Vader <chr [4]> 5 Leia Organa <chr [5]> 6 Owen Lars <chr [3]> 7 Beru Whitesun lars <chr [3]> 8 R5-D4 <chr [1]> 9 Biggs Darklighter <chr [1]> 10 Obi-Wan Kenobi <chr [6]> # … with 77 more rows # gives you a hidden list of films starwars %>% select(name, films) %>% unnest(cols = c(films)) # A tibble: 173 × 2 name films <chr> <chr> 1 Luke Skywalker The Empire Strikes Back 2 Luke Skywalker Revenge of the Sith 3 Luke Skywalker Return of the Jedi 4 Luke Skywalker A New Hope 5 Luke Skywalker The Force Awakens 6 C-3PO The Empire Strikes Back 7 C-3PO Attack of the Clones 8 C-3PO The Phantom Menace 9 C-3PO Revenge of the Sith 10 C-3PO Return of the Jedi # … with 163 more rows # unnest expands to multiple rows to show detail Lists can be useful for bundling togther related data of different types, like the results of a t-test. t_test_output <- list ( "Welch Two Sample t-test", c("data: height by gender"), data.frame(t = -1.5596, df = 37.315, p = 0.1273) ) t_test_output [[1]] [1] "Welch Two Sample t-test" [[2]] [1] "data: height by gender" [[3]] t df p 1 -1.5596 37.315 0.1273 • data frame - a very important data structure in R, which corresponds to rectangular data in a spreadsheet. A data frame is a table of vectors (columns of variables) of the same length. If new vectors are added with a different length, an error will occur. Unlike a matrix, each vector (aka column, aka variable) in a dataframe can be a different data type. So you can combine character strings, integers, real numbers, logical values, and factors in a rectangular data frame in which each row is one observation, and the variables/columns/vectors are the values that are measured at that observation. A data frame can be thought of as a strict version of a list, in which each item in the list is an atomic vector (single data type) and must have the same length. You can even have list columns within a data frame. Note that if you run the typeof() function on a dataframe, it will report that it is a list. You can build a dataframe from a set of vectors (variables) by binding these together as columns/variables with the tibble() function. pat_id <- c(1,1,2,2, 3,3) date <- c(lubridate::ymd("2020-11-07", "2020-12-03", "2020-12-02", "2020-12-15", "2020-11-09", "2020-12-02")) crp <- c(5.1, 3.2, 7.6, 4.1, 4.3, 1.7) new_df <- tibble(pat_id, date, crp) new_df # A tibble: 6 × 3 pat_id date crp <dbl> <date> <dbl> 1 1 2020-11-07 5.1 2 1 2020-12-03 3.2 3 2 2020-12-02 7.6 4 2 2020-12-15 4.1 5 3 2020-11-09 4.3 6 3 2020-12-02 1.7 • tibble - a tibble is a modern upgrade to the data frame, with clear delineation of data types and printing that does not continuously spew out of your console. It also has the properties of a data frame underneath the additional features. You can convert a dataframe to a tibble with tibble(), or use tibble to build with vectors tibble(new_df) # A tibble: 6 × 3 pat_id date crp <dbl> <date> <dbl> 1 1 2020-11-07 5.1 2 1 2020-12-03 3.2 3 2 2020-12-02 7.6 4 2 2020-12-15 4.1 5 3 2020-11-09 4.3 6 3 2020-12-02 1.7 tibble(pat_id, date, crp) # A tibble: 6 × 3 pat_id date crp <dbl> <date> <dbl> 1 1 2020-11-07 5.1 2 1 2020-12-03 3.2 3 2 2020-12-02 7.6 4 2 2020-12-15 4.1 5 3 2020-11-09 4.3 6 3 2020-12-02 1.7 You can also build new row-wise tibbles with the tribble() function. tribble( ~pat_id, ~date, ~crp, 1, lubridate::ymd("2020-12-04"), 5.1, 1, lubridate::ymd("2020-12-09"), 3.7, 2, lubridate::ymd("2020-11-23"), 3.6, 2, lubridate::ymd("2020-11-29"), 1.9, 3, lubridate::ymd("2020-12-14"), 1.9, 3, lubridate::ymd("2020-12-27"), 0.6 ) # A tibble: 6 × 3 pat_id date crp <dbl> <date> <dbl> 1 1 2020-12-04 5.1 2 1 2020-12-09 3.7 3 2 2020-11-23 3.6 4 2 2020-11-29 1.9 5 3 2020-12-14 1.9 6 3 2020-12-27 0.6 R uses many other custom objects to contain things like a linear model, or the results of a t test. Many functions and packages build specific custom objects which are built upon these basic data structures. Similar to data types, functions in R are often designed to work on a specific data structure, and using the wrong data structure as input to a function will result in errors. It is important to be able to check your data structures as part of your initial DEV (Data Evaluation and Validation) process in order to avoid problems and prevent errors. ## 10.3 Examining Data Types and Data Structures There are a number of helpful base R functions to help you examine what the objects in your Environment actually are. This is an important step in avoiding errors, or in avoiding needing to diagnose them after the fact. assigning an object (not =) When you create a new object (dataframe, tibble, vector), it is transient. As soon as it prints to the Console, it is gone. If you want to refer back to it, or process it further later, you need to assign it to an object in your environment. When you do this, it will appear in your Environment pane in RStudio. To do this, you use an arrow from your code to the name of the new object. It is helpful to use concise names that are descriptive, in lower case with minimal punctuation (underscores and dashes are fine), no spaces, and that start with letters rather than numbers. It is important to avoid using R function names (like data or df or sum) as names for your objects. You can use either leftward arrows (Less than then dash key) <- or rightward arrows -> (dash key then greater than key) to assign data to an object. # example 1 tall <- starwars %>% filter(height > 200) # example 2 starwars %>% filter(height <70) -> short Leftward arrows are thought of as sort of like the title of a recipe. In the first example above, you can read this as, “I am going to make a tibble of tall characters. I will start with the starwars dataset, then filter by height >100 to get this tall tibble”. But most people don’t think or talk this way, and it is recommended to write “literate code” - which can be read naturally by humans and by computers. These data pipelines should read like sentences. Generally, we use the literate programming format in example 2 above for data wrangling, starting with a subject (starwars dataset), then one or more (automatically indented) verbs (functions) that wrangle the data, then end with the predicate (a new noun - the new resulting dataset). To do this requires the rightward arrow. To avoid hiding the resulting dataset in a thicket of code, remove the automatic indent and put this new object on the left margin. Once you have an object, you can use several functions to examine what you have, and to make sure that it is in the right format for future data wrangling or plotting functions. The str() function, denoting structure, is a good place to start interrogating data structures. Try this out. Run str(starwars) in your RStudio console. str(starwars) tibble [87 × 14] (S3: tbl_df/tbl/data.frame)$ name      : chr [1:87] "Luke Skywalker" "C-3PO" "R2-D2" "Darth Vader" ...
$height : int [1:87] 172 167 96 202 150 178 165 97 183 182 ...$ mass      : num [1:87] 77 75 32 136 49 120 75 32 84 77 ...
$hair_color: chr [1:87] "blond" NA NA "none" ...$ skin_color: chr [1:87] "fair" "gold" "white, blue" "white" ...
$eye_color : chr [1:87] "blue" "yellow" "red" "yellow" ...$ birth_year: num [1:87] 19 112 33 41.9 19 52 47 NA 24 57 ...
$sex : chr [1:87] "male" "none" "none" "male" ...$ gender    : chr [1:87] "masculine" "masculine" "masculine" "masculine" ...
$homeworld : chr [1:87] "Tatooine" "Tatooine" "Naboo" "Tatooine" ...$ species   : chr [1:87] "Human" "Droid" "Droid" "Human" ...
$films :List of 87 ..$ : chr [1:5] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" ...
..$: chr [1:6] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ... ..$ : chr [1:7] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ...
..$: chr [1:4] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" ..$ : chr [1:5] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" ...
..$: chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" "A New Hope" ..$ : chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" "A New Hope"
..$: chr "A New Hope" ..$ : chr "A New Hope"
..$: chr [1:6] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ... ..$ : chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr [1:2] "Revenge of the Sith" "A New Hope" ..$ : chr [1:5] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Revenge of the Sith" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" ...
..$: chr [1:4] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" "The Force Awakens" ..$ : chr "A New Hope"
..$: chr [1:3] "The Phantom Menace" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope" ..$ : chr [1:3] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Return of the Jedi" "A New Hope"
..$: chr "A New Hope" ..$ : chr [1:5] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ...
..$: chr [1:5] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ... ..$ : chr [1:3] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Attack of the Clones" "Return of the Jedi"
..$: chr "The Empire Strikes Back" ..$ : chr "The Empire Strikes Back"
..$: chr [1:2] "The Empire Strikes Back" "Return of the Jedi" ..$ : chr "The Empire Strikes Back"
..$: chr [1:2] "Return of the Jedi" "The Force Awakens" ..$ : chr "Return of the Jedi"
..$: chr "Return of the Jedi" ..$ : chr "Return of the Jedi"
..$: chr "Return of the Jedi" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr "Return of the Jedi"
..$: chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr "The Phantom Menace"
..$: chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr [1:2] "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr [1:2] "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr [1:2] "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr "Attack of the Clones" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr "Attack of the Clones" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr "Attack of the Clones" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr "Attack of the Clones" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr "Attack of the Clones" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr "The Phantom Menace" ..$ : chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr "Attack of the Clones" ..$ : chr "Attack of the Clones"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr [1:2] "Revenge of the Sith" "A New Hope"
..$: chr [1:2] "Attack of the Clones" "Revenge of the Sith" ..$ : chr "Revenge of the Sith"
..$: chr "The Force Awakens" ..$ : chr "The Force Awakens"
..$: chr "The Force Awakens" ..$ : chr "The Force Awakens"
..$: chr "The Force Awakens" ..$ : chr [1:3] "Attack of the Clones" "The Phantom Menace" "Revenge of the Sith"
$vehicles :List of 87 ..$ : chr [1:2] "Snowspeeder" "Imperial Speeder Bike"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Imperial Speeder Bike"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "Tribubble bongo" ..$ : chr [1:2] "Zephyr-G swoop bike" "XJ-6 airspeeder"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "AT-ST"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Snowspeeder"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Tribubble bongo"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "Sith speeder" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "Flitknot speeder" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Koro-2 Exodrive airspeeder"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Tsmeu-6 personal wheel bike"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
$starships :List of 87 ..$ : chr [1:2] "X-wing" "Imperial shuttle"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "TIE Advanced x1" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "X-wing"
..$: chr [1:5] "Jedi starfighter" "Trade Federation cruiser" "Naboo star skiff" "Jedi Interceptor" ... ..$ : chr [1:3] "Trade Federation cruiser" "Jedi Interceptor" "Naboo fighter"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr [1:2] "Millennium Falcon" "Imperial shuttle"
..$: chr [1:2] "Millennium Falcon" "Imperial shuttle" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "X-wing"
..$: chr "X-wing" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Slave 1"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "Millennium Falcon" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "A-wing" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "Millennium Falcon" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Naboo Royal Starship"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "Scimitar" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Jedi starfighter"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Naboo fighter"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr "Belbullab-22 starfighter"
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr "T-70 X-wing fighter" ..$ : chr(0)
..$: chr(0) ..$ : chr [1:3] "H-type Nubian yacht" "Naboo star skiff" "Naboo fighter"

You can see from the output that this is a tibble, with 87 rows and 14 columns. It also meets the definitions of a table and a dataframe. Then the output shows each variable. The first 11 are either character or integer types. The last 3 (films, vehicles, starships) are all list-columns, and are more complicated.

Note that glimpse(starwars) provides a prettier version of this output

glimpse(starwars)
Rows: 87
Columns: 14
$name <chr> "Luke Skywalker", "C-3PO", "R2-D2", "Da…$ height     <int> 172, 167, 96, 202, 150, 178, 165, 97, 1…
$mass <dbl> 77, 75, 32, 136, 49, 120, 75, 32, 84, 7…$ hair_color <chr> "blond", NA, NA, "none", "brown", "brow…
$skin_color <chr> "fair", "gold", "white, blue", "white",…$ eye_color  <chr> "blue", "yellow", "red", "yellow", "bro…
$birth_year <dbl> 19.0, 112.0, 33.0, 41.9, 19.0, 52.0, 47…$ sex        <chr> "male", "none", "none", "male", "female…
$gender <chr> "masculine", "masculine", "masculine", …$ homeworld  <chr> "Tatooine", "Tatooine", "Naboo", "Tatoo…
$species <chr> "Human", "Droid", "Droid", "Human", "Hu…$ films      <list> <"The Empire Strikes Back", "Revenge o…
$vehicles <list> <"Snowspeeder", "Imperial Speeder Bike…$ starships  <list> <"X-wing", "Imperial shuttle">, <>, <>…

If you want more detail about a given variable inside this dataframe, you can use typeof() or class().

typeof(starwars$mass) [1] "double" class(starwars$mass)
[1] "numeric"

For character variables, typeof() is the same as class(). But these are different for doubles and factors.

Sometimes you want a quick look at all the variable names of a dataset. The functions names() or colnames() can quickly get you a vector of these names.

names(starwars)
 [1] "name"       "height"     "mass"       "hair_color"
[5] "skin_color" "eye_color"  "birth_year" "sex"
[9] "gender"     "homeworld"  "species"    "films"
[13] "vehicles"   "starships" 
colnames(starwars)
 [1] "name"       "height"     "mass"       "hair_color"
[5] "skin_color" "eye_color"  "birth_year" "sex"
[9] "gender"     "homeworld"  "species"    "films"
[13] "vehicles"   "starships" 

If you want the dimensions of your dataset, you can use dim(). To just get the number of rows or columns, you can use nrow() or ncol().

When you have a numeric matrix, sometimes you have a ’bonus” column of rownames, which is a special column that specifies the observation, but does not have a normal column name. This keeps character strings out of the matrix, which can only have one data type. This is kind of a pain, especially if you need to access the information in the rownames column. When this is the case, the dplyr function rownames_to_column(matrix_name) is very helpful. The default name is rowname, but you can supply a better one. Run the example below in your Console pane.

rownames_to_column(mtcars, var = "make_model")
            make_model  mpg cyl  disp  hp drat    wt  qsec
1            Mazda RX4 21.0   6 160.0 110 3.90 2.620 16.46
2        Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0   6 160.0 110 3.90 2.875 17.02
3           Datsun 710 22.8   4 108.0  93 3.85 2.320 18.61
4       Hornet 4 Drive 21.4   6 258.0 110 3.08 3.215 19.44
5    Hornet Sportabout 18.7   8 360.0 175 3.15 3.440 17.02
6              Valiant 18.1   6 225.0 105 2.76 3.460 20.22
7           Duster 360 14.3   8 360.0 245 3.21 3.570 15.84
8            Merc 240D 24.4   4 146.7  62 3.69 3.190 20.00
9             Merc 230 22.8   4 140.8  95 3.92 3.150 22.90
10            Merc 280 19.2   6 167.6 123 3.92 3.440 18.30
11           Merc 280C 17.8   6 167.6 123 3.92 3.440 18.90
12          Merc 450SE 16.4   8 275.8 180 3.07 4.070 17.40
13          Merc 450SL 17.3   8 275.8 180 3.07 3.730 17.60
14         Merc 450SLC 15.2   8 275.8 180 3.07 3.780 18.00
15  Cadillac Fleetwood 10.4   8 472.0 205 2.93 5.250 17.98
16 Lincoln Continental 10.4   8 460.0 215 3.00 5.424 17.82
17   Chrysler Imperial 14.7   8 440.0 230 3.23 5.345 17.42
18            Fiat 128 32.4   4  78.7  66 4.08 2.200 19.47
19         Honda Civic 30.4   4  75.7  52 4.93 1.615 18.52
20      Toyota Corolla 33.9   4  71.1  65 4.22 1.835 19.90
21       Toyota Corona 21.5   4 120.1  97 3.70 2.465 20.01
22    Dodge Challenger 15.5   8 318.0 150 2.76 3.520 16.87
23         AMC Javelin 15.2   8 304.0 150 3.15 3.435 17.30
24          Camaro Z28 13.3   8 350.0 245 3.73 3.840 15.41
25    Pontiac Firebird 19.2   8 400.0 175 3.08 3.845 17.05
26           Fiat X1-9 27.3   4  79.0  66 4.08 1.935 18.90
27       Porsche 914-2 26.0   4 120.3  91 4.43 2.140 16.70
28        Lotus Europa 30.4   4  95.1 113 3.77 1.513 16.90
29      Ford Pantera L 15.8   8 351.0 264 4.22 3.170 14.50
30        Ferrari Dino 19.7   6 145.0 175 3.62 2.770 15.50
31       Maserati Bora 15.0   8 301.0 335 3.54 3.570 14.60
32          Volvo 142E 21.4   4 121.0 109 4.11 2.780 18.60
vs am gear carb
1   0  1    4    4
2   0  1    4    4
3   1  1    4    1
4   1  0    3    1
5   0  0    3    2
6   1  0    3    1
7   0  0    3    4
8   1  0    4    2
9   1  0    4    2
10  1  0    4    4
11  1  0    4    4
12  0  0    3    3
13  0  0    3    3
14  0  0    3    3
15  0  0    3    4
16  0  0    3    4
17  0  0    3    4
18  1  1    4    1
19  1  1    4    2
20  1  1    4    1
21  1  0    3    1
22  0  0    3    2
23  0  0    3    2
24  0  0    3    4
25  0  0    3    2
26  1  1    4    1
27  0  1    5    2
28  1  1    5    2
29  0  1    5    4
30  0  1    5    6
31  0  1    5    8
32  1  1    4    2

## 10.4 Functions

Functions are the verbs of programming in R. Functions act on existing data objects to rearrange them, change them, analyze them, plot them, or report them. Functions in R can do almost anything, and can work together in pipelines (aka chains) to do more complex and interesting things. Functions can call (activate) other functions, and you can build your own custom functions, which comes in handy when you want to do something similar multiple times, like summarizing data on 5 different variables.

You could run a custom summary function on each variable (the argument to the function) each time, or use a programming function like map to run the function over a vector or list of the variables needed.

You can see the inner workings of a function by just entering it into the RStudio console without parentheses. For example, for sd (standard deviation).

sd
function (x, na.rm = FALSE)
sqrt(var(if (is.vector(x) || is.factor(x)) x else as.double(x),
na.rm = na.rm))
<bytecode: 0x7fdd2ef13768>
<environment: namespace:stats>

You can see the inner workings of the sd function. This function takes the variance, then the square root of a vector, which is correct for producing a standard deviation. To run any function, you need to supply the parentheses, which normally contain the arguments (options) and identify the input data. Note that in a data pipe, the first argument is the incoming data, and does not need to be explicitly named in tidyverse functions. In older, non-tidyverse functions, data is often not the first argument, and needs to be named explicitly in a data pipeline, with the argument data = . telling the function to use the incoming data from the pipeline.

To actually run any function, you need to include the parentheses at the end, even if you do not include any arguments. Two examples to try on your own are:

• Sys.Date()
• installed.packages()

Give these a try in your Console pane.

## 10.5 Packages

Packages make functions transportable and shareable. You can bundle a group of related functions into a package, and put it on Github, or even on CRAN, where other people can download it and use these functions for themselves. This can be helpful for miscellaneous functions that co-workers often use, or for a group of functions that work well together in a particular workflow.

Packages can also contain data, which can be used for teaching examples, or as a way to share data. Packages can also contain tutorials related to the functions or the data in the package.

Packages are like apps that you add to a phone to give it new functions. Packages enhance what you can do with R. When you start an R session in RStudio, your base R installation comes with 9 packages. You can see these listed by Clicking on Session/Restart R, then running print(.packages()) or search() in the Console pane. These packages include stats, graphics, grDevices, utils, datasets, devtools, usethis, methods, and base. You will also see the Global Environment and rstudio tools, and any autoloaded packages in this list. These are listed by their order on the search path.

When you run (aka call) a function, R will search this path in order, starting with the Global Environment, then sequentially in the packages loaded, in order, for the function. This means that a function in a package loaded last (at the beginning of the search path) will mask a function with the same name in a package loaded earlier (like base, which is at the end of the search path). When you run the library() function to load a package, R will warn you about conflicts if you load a package with a function with the same name as a function in an already-loaded package.

You can install more packages with the .install.packages() function, and see a pretty printed version of a list of all the installed packages with the library() function (with no arguments in the parentheses). You can get a matrix version (less pretty, but more accessible/manipulable) with the .installed.packages() function in the Console pane. You only have to install a package into your current library once. But to use a package in a current R session, you have to load it with the library(packagename) function.

Let’s try this out on your own computer, within RStudio.

First, within RStudio, go to the top menu bar and select Session/Restart R (Shift-Cmd-F10) to restart R and get a fresh, clean session.

Then go to the Console pane and run the search() function. [Type in search() and press Return]

You will see the search path, and all the currently loaded packages, in order.

You can get a vector of just the loaded packages by going to the Console pane and running print(.packages())

Now load the tidyverse package by running the following in the Console pane:
library(tidyverse)

Note that there are 8 packages installed in addition to the {tidyverse} package (tidyverse is a meta-package, composed of multiple packages).
Also note that there are two Conflicts reported. Two functions in the {dplyr} package, filter() and lag() have the same names as functions in the {stat} package.

This means that when you run filter() or lag(), the default will be to run the {dplyr} versions, as these were installed last. These are earlier in the search path, and will mask the {stats} versions.

You can still use the stats versions if you want to, by using the package prefix, with the format stats::filter() to make clear that you want this version, rather than dplyr::filter().

Now check what your search path looks like with search(). The nine packages from tidyverse (including tidyverse itself) should now be right after .GlobalEnv at the front of the search path, as they were installed last.

If you now run print(.packages()) in the Console pane, you should now have 18 packages loaded.

<Demo - run library(tidyverse) - see the Conflicts warning about filter and lag.><run search() again to see that tidyverse is a meta-package - with multiple new packages loaded in the search path).

Packages are stored in libraries. You have a global library, and you can have project-specific libraries. You can see the file paths to your available libraries with the function .libPaths(). This will print (to the Console) the path to your package library for your specific major version of R.

# You can check your own library path
# Run this function in your Rstudio Console to find the current library on your computer
.libPaths()
[1] "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.1/Resources/library"

## 10.6 The Building Blocks of R

Now you know about the 4 key building blocks of R, and how they work.

Being able to check data types with typeof() and data structures with str() will help you avoid running functions on data that is not in the right format for a particular function. Dataframes and tibbles will be the key data structures which you will frequently manipulate with functions to wrangle, analyze, visualize, and report your medical research.