Exercises for 1.2: Variables & the R workspace

Exercise 1.2.1: Introduction to variables

• Create a variable called potatowhose value corresponds to the number of potatos you’ve eaten in the last week. Or something equally stupid. It doesn’t matter.
• Print out the value of potatoby typing the variable name.
• Do it again using the print()function
• Calculate the square root of potatousing the sqrt()function.
• Print out the value of potato again to verify that the value of potatohasn’t changed
• Reassign the value of potatoto potato * 2
• Print out the new value of potato to verify that it has changed

Exercise 1.2.2: Variables of different types

• you’ve already created a numeric variable: now try making a character (string) variable and a logical variable
• try creating (numeric) variables with “special” values: Inf(infinity), -Inf(minus infinity), NaN(“not a number”)
• try creating a variable with a “missing” value NA
• try creating a variable with a “non-existant” value NULL

Exercise 1.2.3: Creating vectors

• Create a numeric vector with three elements using c()
• Create a character vector with three elements using c()
• Create a numeric vector called agewhose elements contain the ages of three people you know, where the names of each element correspond to the names of those people

Exercise 1.2.4: Indexing vectors

• use “indexing by number” to get R to print out the first element of one of the vectors you created in Exercise 1.2.3.
• use negative indices to get R to print out everything except the first element of that vector
• use logical indexing to return all the ages of all people in agegreater than (say) 25 (or some other number if that makes the results more interesting)
• use indexing by name to return the age of one of the people whose ages you’ve stored in age

Exercise 1.2.5: Variables inside data frames

For this exercise, we’ll use one of the data frames that comes bundled with R, rather than trying to create a new one. The airqualitydata frame contains 153 cases and 6 variables. You can’t actually see it in the workspace because R is storing it in a “hidden” location (sort of).

• Type airqualityat the command line to see what it looks like. (I won’t include the output for this in the solution set because it’s 153 lines long!)
• Use the $method to print out the Windvariable in airquality
• Print out the third element of the Windvariable

Exercise 1.2.6: Working with data frames

• Create a new data frame called aqthat includes only the first 10 cases. Hint: typing c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)is tedious. R allows you to use 1:10as a shorthand method!
• Use logical indexing to print out all days (ie. cases) in aqwhere the Ozone level was higher than 20. (Note how the output deals with the NAvalues)
• Use subset()to do the same thing. Notice the difference in the output.
• Create a TooWindyvariable inside aq, which is a logical variable that is TRUEif Windyis greater than 10, and FALSEotherwise
• Delete that variable

Exercise 1.2.7: Creating factors

• Create a factor corresponding to a categorical variable that can take on three levels: "male","female","other"

Exercise 1.2.8: Removing variables

• clear the workspace using Rstudio’s “clear all” button
• create a variable and then remove it using rm().
• try to print out the value of the removed variable just to see what happens!