Syllabus

In this module you will be introduced to Rstudio and Github. This module will cover:

• The basic data types and its usages;
• How to declare variables;
• How to inspect variables’ types;
• How to change and delete variables.

Lessons

Module 2.1: Basic Data Types

Everything in R is an Object

An object can store, besides its intrinsic value, attributes and even other objects. This also means that data types can be converted into another type, using the proper tools.

The reason for this is that R is designed to store and manipulate Data.

But let’s keep it simple for now. Think of Data being stored in variables, and being manipulated by functions.

You may remember this words from mathematics, when we have something like this:

f(x) = x²∴ f(3) = 9

Which means we have a function that squares the value of a variable.

Variables in R

A variable must have an unique name that identifies it so you can use its value. There is however a set of names that cannot be used, since these names are internally used by R itself. You can find these names here: Reserved words

There are other restrictions about how to chose a variable name:

• Can have a combination of letters, digits, single period and single underscore
• Must start with a letter or a period
• If started with a period, it cannot be followed by a digit

As in math, to assign a value to a variable, we use a proper symbol that represents this action.

We use <- to assign a value to a variable, and this action is named declaration when the variable didn’t exists before.

Some may ask about the = sign. This is a long history that can be discussed later. In short, only use the equals sign when you are assigning a value to a function parameter. Anywhere else, use the <- operator. Try to be used to this “rule-of-thumb”.

Here are some examples of variable definition

my_number <- 4
my_text <- "some text"

# right to left assignment
a <- 4
# left to right assignment, this is not possible with "=" !!!
a -> b

Main Data Types

The R language has five main data types:

• Numeric, is the default computational data type for any decimal value, including irrational numbers;
• Integer, only accepts round numbers;
• Character, this type represent a string, that may be composed by one or more characters;
• Complex, its a special type that represents complex numbers with the real and imaginary parts;
• Logical, represents TRUE or FALSE, and it is not the same as 1 or 0 as in some languages.

Below there are examples of each declaration:

# Numeric
my_first_numeric <- 10
my_second_numeric <- 5.0 # more explicit when using the period

# Integer
my_integer <- 10L # a number followed by 'L' (literal) is an Integer

# Character
my_string <- "the brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

# Complex
my_complex <- 4.1+1.5i

# Logical
my_logical <- TRUE

Inspecting objects

We can use the class() function to inspect what kind of object we have:

class(my_first_numeric)
## [1] "numeric"
class(my_second_numeric)
## [1] "numeric"
class(my_integer)
## [1] "integer"
class(my_string)
## [1] "character"
class(my_complex)
## [1] "complex"
class(my_logical)
## [1] "logical"

And use typeof() to inspect what kind of data is stored in this object:

typeof(my_first_numeric)
## [1] "double"
typeof(my_second_numeric)
## [1] "double"
typeof(my_integer)
## [1] "integer"
typeof(my_string)
## [1] "character"
typeof(my_complex)
## [1] "complex"
typeof(my_logical)
## [1] "logical"

---

Module 2.2: Listing and Deleting Variables

Listing

We can list all variables that we have declared in our workspace with the function ls(). In RStudio you can see them in the Environment tab.

ls() # returns all the existing variables alphabetically
## [1] "my_complex"        "my_first_numeric"  "my_integer"       
## [4] "my_logical"        "my_second_numeric" "my_string"

Deleting

Sometimes we need to clean our workspace. We can use the function rm() to remove permanently one or more objects.

ls() # returns all variables
## [1] "my_complex"        "my_first_numeric"  "my_integer"       
## [4] "my_logical"        "my_second_numeric" "my_string"

rm(my_complex)

ls() # now we see that `my_complex` has been removed
## [1] "my_first_numeric"  "my_integer"        "my_logical"       
## [4] "my_second_numeric" "my_string"

Bear in mind that when you want to have a fresh environment, you need to Restart R. You can do this in RStudio using the menu Session -> Restart R or the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F10.

Module 2.3: Write a simple R code

Your second task is also straightforward:

1. Create, in the project folder, a new file named “assignment.R” (with upper-case .R)
2. Write a code that prints in the console the same output as presented below
3. Save the file and push it back to the repository for evaluation

Output:

numeric
double

Starting of code:

# Write your code here
cat(" ")