R Help Entering Data Fall 2003

There are several different ways to enter data into R. This document will describe several of them.

Entering data using c . The easiest way to enter small data sets is with the function c that concatenates
numbers (or vectors) together. For example, we could create an object named ‘glucose’ containing the 31
measures as follows. This data comes from Exercise 2.10 in the third edition of Statistics for the Life
Sciences by Samuels and Witmer.

> glucose = c(81, 85, 93, 93, 99, 76, 75, 84, 78, 84, 81, 82, 89,
+ 81, 96, 82, 74, 70, 84, 86, 80, 70, 131, 75, 88, 102, 115,
+ 89, 82, 79, 106)

You do not need to type in the ‘+’ symbols, which are prompts that indicates R is waiting for a command
to be completed. As shown here, this command was so long it did not fit onto a single line, so R wrapped
to the following line. You could have typed it in without breaking the command into several lines. You
may also press [Enter] to continue a command on the next line.
Warning—if you type a ‘(’ and then do not complete the command by typing a ‘)’, R will continue
to wait for the command to be completed and show a string of ‘+’ prompts even if you continue to press
[Enter]. If you get in trouble, you can press [Esc], the Escape key to break back to a regular prompt.

Entering data using scan . The previous example is a bit of a pain, because you need to enter all
of the commas. The scan function reads in data separated by “white space”, spaces, tabs, and newline
characters. If you press [Enter] on a blank line, you end the input. Here is the same example.

> glucose = scan()

1: 81 85 93 93 99 76 75 84 78 84 81 82 89 81
15: 96 82 74 70 84 86 80 70 131 75 88 102
27: 115 89 82 79 106
32:
Read 31 items

Entering data using read.table . Your textbook has a CD with all of the data sets used in the
textbook. It is worth learning how to read in these data sets.
You will probably want to begin by creating a folder that will contain the data from the CD. I will
assume that you know how to copy the data files from the CD to a folder on your hard drive. There is
a folder on the CD called ‘DataFiles’. Under this, there is a folder for each chapter. For each chapter,
there are folders for the data sets in different formats. The easiest to read into R are the ASCII formatted
files, or plain text files. The data for Exercise 2.10 is in the ‘DataFiles/Chpt 2/ASCII’ folder and is called
‘glucose.txt’.
If you have copied this file to your hard drive and if you have changed directories through the File menu
so that your working directory contains this data file, this command will read in the data.

> x = read.table("glucose.txt", header = T)

(If you see an error that the file is not found, it is probably the case that the file is not in your working
directory. You may want to try the file.choose method described below.)
Bret Larget September 15, 2003
R Help Entering Data Fall 2003

The file “glucose.txt” is typical for ASCII data sets from the textbook. The first row contains a “header”,
the variable names for each variable. In addition ot the header, there is one row for each observational
unit. This example has only one variable and one column of data. Other examples can have multiple
columns of data. The default behavior of R is to read in data frames without headers. That is why it was
necessary to add the argument header=T to the command.
The R commands above create x, an object known in R as a data frame. The name x is arbitrary. You
may use any valid variable name (which does not begin with a digit or use characters with other meaning).
A data frame is a data matrix, but can include both categorical and numerical variables.
To ensure that you have read in what you think you have, it is useful to use the command str to check
the structure of the data frame.

> str(x)

‘data.frame’: 31 obs. of 1 variable:

$ glucose: int 81 85 93 93 99 76 75 84 78 84 ...

The output tells you that the data frame x has one quantitative variable called glucose and it shows
the first several values.
After reading in a data frame, R will recognize the name x as the name of the entire data frame, but
R will not recognize the variable glucose. There are two ways to get around this. First, the variables of
each data frame may be accessed using the $ operator. Here is an example.

> x$glucose

[1] 81 85 93 93 99 76 75 84 78 84 81 82 89 81 96 82 74 70 84
[20] 86 80 70 131 75 88 102 115 89 82 79 106

Alternatively, if you use the attach command, you can refer to each variable in x by name without the
dollar sign.

> attach(x)
> glucose

[1] 81 85 93 93 99 76 75 84 78 84 81 82 89 81 96 82 74 70 84
[20] 86 80 70 131 75 88 102 115 89 82 79 106

You only need to type in the attach command once per session — once you have done it, R will know
that glucose means the same thing as x$glucose until you quit R.

Reading in data using file.choose. As an alternative to typing in the file name, you may use the
function file.choose which will open up a dialog box that you can use to move through your folders to
find the data file you want to read in. The syntax is

> x = read.table(file.choose(),header=T)

Bret Larget September 15, 2003

R Help Entering Data Fall 2003

Reading in data from an Excel file. R does not read in data directly from an Excel file, but you can
use Excel to export data in a format that R can read. To do this, create an Excel spread sheet. Use the first
row of the spread sheet as the header row and put the variable values below. Then, save this spread sheet
as a CSV file, for comma-separated-variable file. This format is a plain text file, but there will be commas
instead of spaces between variable values. Then, in R you would read in the data using read.table with
the additional argument sep="," to indicate that commas are used as separators between fields. When
there is only one variable, this is not necessary.
If you have a data file called “students.csv” that looks like this,

First,Last,Height,BloodType
Adam,Ant,71.5,A
Jon,Bon Jovi,70,O
Marshal,Mathers,69,B
Elvis,Presley,73,AB

you could read in the data and check it with these commands.

> students = read.table("students.csv", header = T, sep = ",")

> str(students)

‘data.frame’: 4 obs. of 4 variables:

$ First : Factor w/ 4 levels "Adam","Elvis",..: 1 3 2 4
$ Last : Factor w/ 4 levels "Ant","Bon Jovi",..: 1 2 4 3
$ Height : num 71.5 70 73 69
$ BloodType: Factor w/ 4 levels "A","AB","B","O": 1 4 2 3

Bret Larget September 15, 2003