Bits and Pieces on R

Today I listed through three weeks of R Programming lectures again, and took a few notes. Data Types I thought I knew what a vector was -- it's supposed to have a velocity and a direction, right? Not so in R. It's more like a general data container. Not much of a container, either -- maybe like storing a bunch of food in a plastic bag in the fridge. All items get turned into the same type if you dump them into a vector.

Assignment: x <- "thingy" Creation: x <- vector("numeric", length = 10)

If you add a bit of dimensionality to the data container by stacking up some vectors, now you've got a matrix. Maybe turn your plastic bag storage approach into one of those divided plastic toolboxes. This makes me wish my matrix math was a bit crispier . . . it's been a while. Time to sign up for more math classes I guess. But everybody's favorite has gotta be the data frame. This is an organizer for your data, with headers and such -- pretty much Excel spreadsheets but more flexible to program against.