Vector in R Explained – All about Vector in R

what is Vector in R:

In this tutorial we will learn about vector in R. The vector is the simplest way to store more than one value in R. The c function (mnemonic for concatenate or combine) allows you to quickly enter data into R.

Numeric Vector Example:
X <- c(1,-2,5.3,6,-20,4) # numeric vector
print(X) 

Output:

[1]   1.0  -2.0   5.3   6.0 -20.0   4.0

 

Character Vector Example:
Y <- c("one","two","three") # character vector
print(Y)

Output:

[1] “one”   “two”   “three”

 

Logical Vector Example:
Z <- c(FALSE,TRUE,FALSE,FALSE,TRUE,FALSE) #logical vector
print(Z)

Output:

[1] FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE TRUE FALSE

In vector, Objects should be of single data type. vector doesn’t accept multiple data type

Example :

W <- c(FALSE,1,-2.0,"two")
print(W)
mode(W)

Output:

[1] “FALSE” “1”     “-2”    “two”

[1] “character”

In the above example, the object W has converted all the elements of different data type into character.

 

Accessing Vector Elements in R

Elements of a Vector in R are accessed using indexing. The [ ] brackets are used for indexing. Indexing starts with position 1. Giving a negative value in the index drops the element of that position from result. TRUE, FALSE or 0 and 1 can also be used for indexing.

# Accessing vector elements using position.
x <- c("Jan","Feb","Mar","April","May","June","July")
y <- x[c(2,3,6)]
print(y)


# Accessing vector elements using logical indexing.
v <- x[c(TRUE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,TRUE,FALSE)]
print(v)


# Accessing vector elements using negative indexing.

t <- x[c(-2,-5)]

print(t)

When we execute the above code, it produces the following result −

[1] “Feb”  “Mar”  “June”

[1] “Jan”  “June”

[1] “Jan”   “Mar”   “April” “June”  “July”

Vector arithmetic operations(addition subtraction, multiplication and division) in R:

Two vectors of same length can be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided giving the result as a vector output.

# Create two vectors.
v1 <- c(1,2,4,5,7,11)
v2 <- c(12,4,3,8,1,21) 

# Vector addition.
add.result <- v1 v2
print(add.result) 

# Vector substraction.
sub.result <- v1-v2
print(sub.result) 

# Vector multiplication.
multi.result <- v1*v2
print(multi.result) 

# Vector division.
divi.result <- v1/v2
print(divi.result)

When we execute the above code, it produces the following result −

[1]  13  6  7 13  8 32

[1] -11  -2   1  -3   6 -10

[1] 12   8  12  40   7 231

[1] 0.08333333 0.50000000 1.33333333 0.62500000 7.00000000 0.52380952

 

Vector element recycling in R

If we apply arithmetic operations to two vectors of unequal length, then the elements of the shorter vector are recycled to complete the operations.

v1 <- c(1,2,4,5,7,11)
v2 <- c(4,11)    # V2 becomes c(4,11,4,11,4,11) 
add.result <- v1 v2
print(add.result) 
sub.result <- v1-v2
print(sub.result)

When we execute the above code, it produces the following result −

[1]  5 13  8 16 11 22

[1] -3 -9  0 -6  3  0

 

Sorting a Vector in R

Elements in a vector can be sorted using the sort() function.

#numerical vector sort
v1 <- c(1,2,4,5,7,11)
sort(v1) # sorts in ascending order which is default
sort(v1,decreasing=TRUE) # sorts in descending order  

# Character vector sort
v2 <- c("Cherry","BlueBerry","Apple","Pineapple")
sort(v2) # sorts in Alphabetical order which is default
sort(v2,decreasing=TRUE) # sorts in Reverse Alphabetical order

When we execute the above code, it produces the following result −

[1]  1  2  4  5  7 11

[1] 11  7  5  4  2  1

[1] “Apple”     “BlueBerry” “Cherry”    “Pineapple”

[1] “Pineapple” “Cherry”    “BlueBerry” “Apple”

previous-small vector in Rnext_small vector in R

Author

  • Sridhar Venkatachalam

    With close to 10 years on Experience in data science and machine learning Have extensively worked on programming languages like R, Python (Pandas), SAS, Pyspark.