## Data Types:

• One dimensional types (‘vectors’):
• Character: strings or individual characters, quoted
• Numeric: any real number(s)
• Integer: any integer(s)/whole numbers
• Factor: categorical/qualitative variables
• Logical: variables composed of TRUE or FALSE
• Date/POSIXct: represents calendar dates and times

## Character and numeric

We have already covered character and numeric types.

class(c("Andrew", "Jaffe"))
## [1] "character"
class(c(1, 4, 7))
## [1] "numeric"

## Integer

Integer is a special subset of numeric that contains only whole numbers

A sequence of numbers is an example of the integer type

x = seq(from = 1, to = 5) # seq() is a function
x
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5
class(x)
## [1] "integer"

## Integer

The colon : is a shortcut for making sequences of numbers

It makes consecutive integer sequence from [num1] to [num2] by 1

1:5
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5

## Logical

logical is a type that only has two possible elements: TRUE and FALSE

x = c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE)
class(x)
## [1] "logical"
is.numeric(c("Andrew", "Jaffe"))
## [1] FALSE
is.character(c("Andrew", "Jaffe"))
## [1] TRUE

## Logical

Note that logical elements are NOT in quotes.

z = c("TRUE", "FALSE", "TRUE", "FALSE")
class(z)
## [1] "character"
as.logical(z)
## [1]  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE

Bonus: sum() and mean() work on logical vectors - they return the total and proportion of TRUE elements, respectively.

sum(as.logical(z))
## [1] 2

## General Class Information

There are two useful functions associated with practically all R classes, which relate to logically checking the underlying class (is.CLASS_()) and coercing between classes (as.CLASS_()).

is.numeric(c("Andrew", "Jaffe"))
## [1] FALSE
is.character(c("Andrew", "Jaffe"))
## [1] TRUE

## General Class Information

There are two useful functions associated with practically all R classes, which relate to logically checking the underlying class (is.CLASS_()) and coercing between classes (as.CLASS_()).

as.character(c(1, 4, 7))
## [1] "1" "4" "7"
as.numeric(c("Andrew", "Jaffe"))
## Warning: NAs introduced by coercion
## [1] NA NA

## Factors

A factor is a special character vector where the elements have pre-defined groups or ‘levels’. You can think of these as qualitative or categorical variables:

x = factor(c("boy", "girl", "girl", "boy", "girl"))
x 
## [1] boy  girl girl boy  girl
## Levels: boy girl
class(x)
## [1] "factor"

Note that levels are, by default, in alphanumerical order.

## Factors

Factors are used to represent categorical data, and can also be used for ordinal data (ie categories have an intrinsic ordering)

Note that R reads in character strings as factors by default in functions like read.csv() (but not read_csv)

‘The function factor is used to encode a vector as a factor (the terms ’category’ and ‘enumerated type’ are also used for factors). If argument ordered is TRUE, the factor levels are assumed to be ordered.’

factor(x = character(), levels, labels = levels,
exclude = NA, ordered = is.ordered(x))

## Necessary for the lab: %in%

x = c(0, 2, 2, 3, 4)
(x == 0 | x == 2) 
## [1]  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE

Introduce the %in% operator:

x %in% c(0, 2) # NEVER has NA and returns logical
## [1]  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE

reads “return TRUE if x is in 0 or 2”. (Like inlist in Stata).

## Factors

Suppose we have a vector of case-control status

cc = factor(c("case","case","case",
"control","control","control"))
cc
## [1] case    case    case    control control control
## Levels: case control

We can reset the levels using the levels function, but this is bad and can cause problems. You should do this using the levels argument in the factor()

levels(cc) = c("control","case")
cc
## [1] control control control case    case    case
## Levels: control case

## Factors

Note that the levels are alphabetically ordered by default. We can also specify the levels within the factor call

casecontrol = c("case","case","case","control",
"control","control")
factor(casecontrol, levels = c("control","case") )
## [1] case    case    case    control control control
## Levels: control case
factor(casecontrol, levels = c("control","case"),
ordered=TRUE)
## [1] case    case    case    control control control
## Levels: control < case

## Factors

Another way to do this once you already have the factor made is with the relevel() function.

cc = factor(c("case","case","case",
"control","control","control"))
relevel(cc, "control")
## [1] case    case    case    control control control
## Levels: control case

## Factors

One of the core “tidyverse” packages is forcats which offers useful functionality for interacting with factors. For example, there is a function for releveling factors here:

fct_relevel(cc, "control")
## [1] case    case    case    control control control
## Levels: control case

## Factors

There are other useful functions for dictating the levels of factors, like in the order they appears in the vector, by frequency, or into collapsed groups.

levels(fct_inorder(chickwts$feed)) ## [1] "horsebean" "linseed" "soybean" "sunflower" "meatmeal" "casein" levels(fct_infreq(chickwts$feed))
## [1] "soybean"   "casein"    "linseed"   "sunflower" "meatmeal"  "horsebean"
levels(fct_lump(chickwts$feed, n=1)) ## [1] "soybean" "Other" ## Factors Factors can be converted to numeric or character very easily x = factor(casecontrol, levels = c("control","case") ) as.character(x) ## [1] "case" "case" "case" "control" "control" "control" as.numeric(x) ## [1] 2 2 2 1 1 1 ## Creating categorical variables The rep() [“repeat”] function is useful for creating new variables bg = rep(c("boy","girl"),each=50) head(bg) ## [1] "boy" "boy" "boy" "boy" "boy" "boy" bg2 = rep(c("boy","girl"),times=50) head(bg2) ## [1] "boy" "girl" "boy" "girl" "boy" "girl" length(bg) == length(bg2) ## [1] TRUE ## Lab Part 2 ## Dates You can convert date-like strings in the Date class (http://www.statmethods.net/input/dates.html for more info) using the lubridate package! circ = jhur::read_circulator() head(sort(circ$date))
## [1] "01/01/2011" "01/01/2012" "01/01/2013" "01/02/2011" "01/02/2012"
## [6] "01/02/2013"
library(lubridate) # great for dates!
circ = mutate(circ, newDate2 = mdy(date))
head(circ$newDate2) ## [1] "2010-01-11" "2010-01-12" "2010-01-13" "2010-01-14" "2010-01-15" ## [6] "2010-01-16" range(circ$newDate2) # gives you the range of the data
## [1] "2010-01-11" "2013-03-01"

## Works great - but need to specy the correct format still

See ?ymd and ?ymd_hms

x = c("2014-02-4 05:02:00", "2016/09/24 14:02:00")
ymd_hms(x)
## [1] "2014-02-04 05:02:00 UTC" "2016-09-24 14:02:00 UTC"
ymd_hm(x)
## Warning: All formats failed to parse. No formats found.
## [1] NA NA

## POSIXct

The POSIXct class is like a more general date format (with hours, minutes, seconds).

x = c("2014-02-4 05:02:00", "2016/09/24 14:02:00")
dates = ymd_hms(x)
class(dates)
## [1] "POSIXct" "POSIXt"

The as.Period command is helpful for adding time to a date:

theTime = Sys.time()
theTime
## [1] "2020-01-05 20:25:23 EST"
class(theTime)
## [1] "POSIXct" "POSIXt"
theTime + as.period(20, unit = "minutes") # the future
## [1] "2020-01-05 20:45:23 EST"

## Differences in Times

You can subtract times as well, the difftime function is helpful as you can set the units (note it does time1 - time2):

the_future = ymd_hms("2020-12-31 11:59:59")
the_future - theTime
## Time difference of 360.4407 days
difftime(the_future, theTime, units = "weeks")
## Time difference of 51.49153 weeks

## Data Classes:

• Two dimensional classes:
• data.frame: traditional ‘Excel’ spreadsheets
• Each column can have a different class, from above
• Matrix: two-dimensional data, composed of rows and columns. Unlike data frames, the entire matrix is composed of one R class, e.g. all numeric or all characters.

## Matrices

n = 1:9
n
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
mat = matrix(n, nrow = 3)
mat
##      [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,]    1    4    7
## [2,]    2    5    8
## [3,]    3    6    9

## Data Selection

Matrices have two “slots” you can use to select data, which represent rows and columns, that are separated by a comma, so the syntax is matrix[row,column]. Note you cannot use dplyr functions on matrices.

mat[1, 1] # individual entry: row 1, column 1
## [1] 1
mat[1, ] # first row
## [1] 1 4 7
mat[, 1] # first columns
## [1] 1 2 3

## Data Selection

Note that the class of the returned object is no longer a matrix

class(mat[1, ])
## [1] "integer"
class(mat[, 1])
## [1] "integer"

## Data Frames

To review, the data.frame/tbl_df are the other two dimensional variable classes.

Again, data frames are like matrices, but each column is a vector that can have its own class. So some columns might be character and others might be numeric, while others maybe a factor.

## Lists

• One other data type that is the most generic are lists.
• Can be created using list()
• Can hold vectors, strings, matrices, models, list of other list, lists upon lists!
[1] "A" "b" "c"

$numbers [1] 1 2 3 [[3]] [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [1,] 1 6 11 16 21 [2,] 2 7 12 17 22 [3,] 3 8 13 18 23 [4,] 4 9 14 19 24 [5,] 5 10 15 20 25 ## List referencing > mylist[1] # returns a list $letters
[1] "A" "b" "c"
> mylist["letters"] # returns a list
$letters [1] "A" "b" "c" ## List referencing > mylist[[1]] # returns the vector 'letters' [1] "A" "b" "c" > mylist$letters # returns vector
[1] "A" "b" "c"
> mylist[["letters"]] # returns the vector 'letters'
[1] "A" "b" "c"

## List referencing

You can also select multiple lists with the single brackets.

> mylist[1:2] # returns a list
$letters [1] "A" "b" "c"$numbers
[1] 1 2 3

## List referencing

You can also select down several levels of a list at once

> mylist$letters[1] [1] "A" > mylist[[2]][1] [1] 1 > mylist[[3]][1:2,1:2]  [,1] [,2] [1,] 1 6 [2,] 2 7 ## Quick Aside: “slicing” data: like _n and _N in Stata In dplyr, there are first, last and nth operators. If you first sort a data set using arrange, you can grab the first or last as so: circ %>% mutate(first_date = first(newDate2), last_date = last(newDate2), third_date = nth(newDate2, 3)) %>% select(day, date, first_date, last_date, third_date) %>% head(3) ## # A tibble: 3 x 5 ## day date first_date last_date third_date ## <chr> <chr> <date> <date> <date> ## 1 Monday 01/11/2010 2010-01-11 2013-03-01 2010-01-13 ## 2 Tuesday 01/12/2010 2010-01-11 2013-03-01 2010-01-13 ## 3 Wednesday 01/13/2010 2010-01-11 2013-03-01 2010-01-13 ## Quick Aside: “slicing” data Many times, you need to group first circ %>% group_by(day) %>% mutate(first_date = first(newDate2), last_date = last(newDate2), third_date = nth(newDate2, 3)) %>% select(day, date, first_date, last_date, third_date) %>% head(3) ## # A tibble: 3 x 5 ## # Groups: day [3] ## day date first_date last_date third_date ## <chr> <chr> <date> <date> <date> ## 1 Monday 01/11/2010 2010-01-11 2013-02-25 2010-01-25 ## 2 Tuesday 01/12/2010 2010-01-12 2013-02-26 2010-01-26 ## 3 Wednesday 01/13/2010 2010-01-13 2013-02-27 2010-01-27 ## Differences in Times circ = circ %>% group_by(day) %>% mutate(first_date = first(newDate2), diff_from_first = difftime( # time1 - time2 time1 = newDate2, time2 = first_date)) head(circ$diff_from_first, 10)
## Time differences in secs
##  [1]      0      0      0      0      0      0      0 604800 604800 604800
units(circ$diff_from_first) = "days" head(circ$diff_from_first, 10)
## Time differences in days
##  [1] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 7 7