Chapter 8: Your Own Functions!
Tyson S. Barrett
Summer 2017
Utah State University
1
Introduction
Creating a Function
Named Functions
Anonymous Functions
Why Write Your Own?
Loops with User-Defined Functions
Conclusions
2
Introduction
3
Introduction
User-defined functions — functions you create yourself — are an
important tool.
We will show how you can make your own functions.
4
What is a Function Anyway?
It is a special R object that performs something on another object or
the environment.
For example,
• ggplot() takes a data.frame object and variable names and
produces a plot.
• lm() takes a formula, a data.frame and performs a statistical
model.
• gather() takes a data.frame and produces another
data.frame in another form
5
Creating a Function
6
Creating a Function
It all starts with the function function().
myfunction <- function(arguments){
stuff = that(you)
want = it + to + do + 4
you
}
After function() we use { and }. Everything in between is what
you want the function to do.
All you need to do is run the function and you can use it in the R
session.
7
Named Functions
8
Named Functions
These are functions that you assign a name to.
mean2 <- function(x){
n <- length(x)
m <- (1/n) * sum(x)
return(m)
}
Now, mean2() is a function you can use.
What does this function do?
9
Named Functions
v1 <- c(1,3,2,4,2,1,2,1,1,1) ## vector to try
Let’s give it a try using the vector v1
mean2(v1) ## our function
## [1] 1.8
mean(v1) ## the base R function
## [1] 1.8
10
Named Functions
For practice, we will write one more function. Let’s make a function
that takes a vector and gives us the N, the mean, and the standard
deviation.
important_statistics <- function(x, na.rm=FALSE){
N <- length(x)
M <- mean(x, na.rm=na.rm)
SD <- sd(x, na.rm=na.rm)
final <- c(N, M, SD)
return(final)
}
11
Named functions
One of the first things you should note is that we included a second
argument in the function seen as na.rm=FALSE (you can have as
many arguments as you want within reason).
• This argument has a default that we provide as FALSE
• We take what is provided in the na.rm and give that to both
the mean() and sd() functions.
• Finally, you should notice that we took several pieces of
information and combined them into the final object and
returned that.
12
Named Functions
Let’s try it out with the vector we created earlier.
important_statistics(v1)
## [1] 10.000000 1.800000 1.032796
13
Named Functions
Looks good but we may want to change a few aesthetics. In the
following code, we adjust it so we have each one labeled.
important_statistics2 <- function(x, na.rm=FALSE){
N <- length(x)
M <- mean(x, na.rm=na.rm)
SD <- sd(x, na.rm=na.rm)
final <- data.frame(N, "Mean"=M, "SD"=SD)
return(final)
}
important_statistics2(v1)
## N Mean SD
## 1 10 1.8 1.032796 14
Anonymous Functions
15
Anonymous Functions
Sometimes it is not worth saving a function but want to use it,
generally within loops.
function(x) thing(that, you, want, it, to, do, with, x)
We will show a few of these in the looping section (although they
are identical in nature to named functions, they just aren’t named)
16
Why Write Your Own?
17
Why Write Your Own?
Several reasons exist.
• Looping
• Adjusting output
• Performing a special function
• Other customization
We are going to talk about looping in depth.
18
Looping
Writing your own functions for looping is very common and
practical.
Loops are things that are repeated.
For example:
• We may want a certain statistic (like a mean) for every
continuous variable in the data set.
• We may want to remove 999 from every variable in a data set.
• We may want to change variable types of certain variables
across the whole data set.
19
Looping
Examples in R include:
• for loops
• the apply family of functions
20
For Loops
for (i in 1:10){
mean(data[, i])
}
21
For Loops
Another example:
library(tidyverse)
data = read.csv("~/Dropbox/Teaching/R for Social Sciences/D
select(Prod1, MentalApt, PhysApt, Income, Children, SubsU
thing = list()
for (i in 1:8){
thing[[i]] = cbind(mean(data[, i]), sd(data[, i]))
}
22
For Loops
thing
## [[1]]
## [,1] [,2]
## [1,] 3.2 1.146423
##
## [[2]]
## [,1] [,2]
## [1,] 5.2 2.305273
##
## [[3]]
## [,1] [,2]
## [1,] 5.733333 1.869556
##
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## [[4]]
For loops
I like for loops. They are easy to understand and fiddle with, after
some practice.
However, they used to be slow in R and so they have a bad
reputation.
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The apply family
There are several apply functions in R that do loops for you.
• apply()
• sapply()
• lapply()
• tapply()
25
sapply
Produces a vector based on the function that it is repeating.
Both do the same thing here.
for (i in 1:10){
mean(data[, i])
}
sapply(1:10, function(i) mean(data[, i]))
26
sapply
Can also just provide the data.frame and it assumes you want the
function (in this case mean()) applied to each variable.
sapply(data, mean)
## Prod1 MentalApt PhysApt Income Children
## 3.2000000 5.2000000 5.7333333 53.3333333 0.4000000
## Ment1 Ment2
## 13.8666667 6.0666667
27
lapply
Produces a list. Just like sapply() it takes a data.frame and a
function and applies it across the variables.
lapply(data, mean)
## $Prod1
## [1] 3.2
##
## $MentalApt
## [1] 5.2
##
## $PhysApt
## [1] 5.733333
##
## $Income 28
tapply
Is a bit different than the rest. It doesn’t do much in terms of
looping necessarily (although you can have it do that). Instead, it
applies a function based on a grouping variable. With the
tidyverse, however, this is not often used any more.
tapply(data$Income, data$Children, mean)
## 0 1 2
## 53.18182 55.00000 52.50000
How could you do this in the tidyverse framework?
29
Loops with User-Defined Functions
30
Loops with User-Defined Functions
Going back to our important_statistics2() function:
important_statistics2 <- function(x, na.rm=FALSE){
N <- length(x)
M <- mean(x, na.rm=na.rm)
SD <- sd(x, na.rm=na.rm)
final <- data.frame(N, "Mean"=M, "SD"=SD)
return(final)
}
Let’s put it in a loop.
31
Loops with User-Defined Functions
lapply(data, important_statistics2)
## $Prod1
## N Mean SD
## 1 15 3.2 1.146423
##
## $MentalApt
## N Mean SD
## 1 15 5.2 2.305273
##
## $PhysApt
## N Mean SD
## 1 15 5.733333 1.869556
##
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## $Income
Loops with User-Defined Functions
sapply(data, important_statistics2)
## Prod1 MentalApt PhysApt Income Children Subs
## N 15 15 15 15 15 15
## Mean 3.2 5.2 5.733333 53.33333 0.4 0.26
## SD 1.146423 2.305273 1.869556 12.63027 0.7367884 0.45
## Ment2
## N 15
## Mean 6.066667
## SD 2.65832
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Loops with User-Defined Functions
It applied our function across the variables in the data.frame. So
we can easily get information we want.
This was a very simplified version of how I created the table1()
function in furniture.
34
Conclusions
35
Conclusions
Writing your own functions takes time and practice but it can be a
worthwhile tool in using R.
I recommend you start simple and start soon.
Ultimately, you can make your own group of functions you use often
and create a package for it so others can use them too :)
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