Data Frame Selection and Indexing
We've seen how to call built-in data frames and how to create them using data.frame() along with vectors. Let's revisit our weather data
frame and learn how to select elements from within the dataframe using bracket notation:
In [1]:
# Some made up weather data
days <- c('mon','tue','wed','thu','fri')
temp <- c(22.2,21,23,24.3,25)
rain <- c(TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE)
# Pass in the vectors:
df <- data.frame(days,temp,rain)
In [2]:
df
Out[2]:
days temp rain
1 mon 22.2 TRUE
2 tue 21 TRUE
3 wed 23 FALSE
4 thu 24.3 FALSE
5 fri 25 TRUE
We can use the same bracket notation we used for matrices:
df[rows,columns]
In [4]:
# Everything from first row
df[1,]
Out[4]:
days temp rain
1 mon 22.2 TRUE
In [5]:
#Everything from first column
df[,1]
Out[5]:
mon tue wed thu fri
In [6]:
# Grab Friday data
df[5,]
Out[6]:
days temp rain
5 fri 25 TRUE
Selecting using column names
Here is where data frames become very powerful, we can use column names to select data for the columns instead of having to
remember numbers. So for example:
In [8]:
# All rain values
df[,'rain']
Out[8]:
TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE TRUE
In [11]:
# First 5 rows for days and temps
df[1:5,c('days','temp')]
Out[11]:
days temp
1 mon 22.2
2 tue 21
3 wed 23
4 thu 24.3
5 fri 25
If you want all the values of a particular column you can use the dollar sign directly after the dataframe as follows:
df.name$column.name
In [12]:
df$rain
Out[12]:
TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE TRUE
In [15]:
df$days
Out[15]:
mon tue wed thu fri
You can also use bracket notation to return a data frame format of the same information:
In [14]:
df['rain']
Out[14]:
rain
1 TRUE
2 TRUE
3 FALSE
4 FALSE
5 TRUE
In [18]:
df['days']
Out[18]:
days
1 mon
2 tue
3 wed
4 thu
5 fri
Filtering with a subset condition
We can use the subset() function to grab a subset of values from our data frame based off some condition. So for example, imagin we
wanted to grab the days where it rained (rain=True), we can use the subset() function as follows:
In [19]:
subset(df,subset=rain==TRUE)
Out[19]:
days temp rain
1 mon 22.2 TRUE
2 tue 21 TRUE
5 fri 25 TRUE
Notice how the condition uses some sort of comparison operator, in the above case ==. Let's grab days where the temperature was
greater than 23:
In [20]:
subset(df,subset= temp>23)
Out[20]:
days temp rain
4 thu 24.3 FALSE
5 fri 25 TRUE
Another thing to note is that we didn't pass in the column name as a character string, subset knows that you are referring to a column in
that data frame.
Odering a Data Frame
We can sort the order of our data frame by using the order function. You pass in the column you want to sort by into the order()
function, then you use that vector to select from the dataframe. Let's see an example of sorting by the temperature:
In [28]:
sorted.temp <- order(df['temp'])
In [29]:
df[sorted.temp,]
Out[29]:
days temp rain
2 tue 21 TRUE
1 mon 22.2 TRUE
3 wed 23 FALSE
4 thu 24.3 FALSE
5 fri 25 TRUE
Let's take a look at what sorted.temp actually is:
In [30]:
sorted.temp
Out[30]:
2 1 3 4 5
Ok, so we are just asking for those index elements in that order (by default ascending, we can pass a negative sign to do descending
order):
In [31]:
desc.temp <- order(-df['temp'])
In [32]:
df[desc.temp,]
Out[32]:
days temp rain
5 fri 25 TRUE
4 thu 24.3 FALSE
3 wed 23 FALSE
1 mon 22.2 TRUE
2 tue 21 TRUE
We could have also used the other column selection methods we learned:
In [34]:
sort.temp <- order(df$temp)
df[sort.temp,]
Out[34]:
days temp rain
2 tue 21 TRUE
1 mon 22.2 TRUE
3 wed 23 FALSE
4 thu 24.3 FALSE
5 fri 25 TRUE
That's it for data frames! We will definitely revisit this and explore data frames A LOT more, but we should test you understanding first! Up
next an exercise!
