R in a Nutshell

Entering Data Within R

If you are entering a small number of observations, entering the data directly into R might be a good approach. There are a couple of different ways to enter data into R.

Entering Data Using R Commands

Many of the examples in Parts I and II show how to create new objects directly on the R console. If you are entering a small amount of data, this might be a good approach.

As we have seen before, to create a vector, use the c function:

> salary <- c(18700000,14626720,14137500,13980000,12916666)
> position <- c("QB","QB","DE","QB","QB")
> team <- c("Colts","Patriots","Panthers","Bengals","Giants")
> name.last <- c("Manning","Brady","Pepper","Palmer","Manning")
> name.first <- c("Peyton","Tom","Julius","Carson","Eli")

It’s often convenient to put these vectors together into a data frame. To create a data frame, use the data.frame function to combine the vectors:

> top.5.salaries <- data.frame(name.last,name.first,team,position,salary)
> top.5.salaries
  name.last name.first     team position   salary
1   Manning     Peyton    Colts       QB 18700000
2     Brady        Tom Patriots       QB 14626720
3    Pepper     Julius Panthers       DE 14137500
4    Palmer     Carson  Bengals       QB 13980000
5   Manning        Eli   Giants       QB 12916666

Using the Edit GUI

Entering data using individual statements can be awkward for more than a handful of observations. (That’s why my example above only included five observations.) Luckily, R provides a nice GUI for editing tabular data: the data editor.

To edit an object with the data editor, use the edit function. ...