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Cs446 Tool Using Formulas Within Functions

This document explains how to use formulas within functions in R, particularly with the Titanic data set. It provides examples of how to summarize and visualize data using functions like aggregate() to analyze passenger survival based on variables such as sex and passenger class. The document includes code snippets for manipulating the Titanic data set and creating relevant formulas for analysis.

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3 views3 pages

Cs446 Tool Using Formulas Within Functions

This document explains how to use formulas within functions in R, particularly with the Titanic data set. It provides examples of how to summarize and visualize data using functions like aggregate() to analyze passenger survival based on variables such as sex and passenger class. The document includes code snippets for manipulating the Titanic data set and creating relevant formulas for analysis.

Uploaded by

hasiba
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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TOOL

Using Formulas Within


Functions
All functions use arguments to determine what operations they should carry out, but some functions
can also use formulas. A formula is a special type of object in R. Using formulas within a function
can make it easier to write and adjust your code. Functions that can use formulas include plot(),
aggregate(), barchart(), and boxplot().

The examples below are based on the titanic data set you examined in this course. You can use
the titanic data set to ask many different questions that have varying levels of complexity.

Using R With This Tool


The portions of this tool with a gray background are code text that you can use to do the examples
included in this tool or modify to work with your own data. To use these examples, type the lines
of code that don’t begin with a pound sign (#) into R to carry out the command. Commented text
begins with one pound sign (#) and explains the lines of code. The code output begins with two
pound signs (##).

Data Set Information


The titanic data set contains demographic information of passengers on the RMS Titanic,
which sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. The titanic data set has data on each passenger in
the rows and on passenger characteristics in the columns. To use the titanic data set with this
tool, download the data set, set your working directory to the location of the data set, and run the
following code:

Summarizing and Visualizing Data


© 2021 Cornell University 1
Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science
titanic <- read.table("titanic.txt", header = TRUE) # Read in the data

# Change the Survived variable to a factor with the factor() function by


# telling R to replace 0 with No and 1 with Yes, then replacing
# titanic$Survived with SurvivedFactor:

SurvivedFactor <- factor(titanic$Survived, levels = c("0", "1"),


labels = c("No", "Yes"))
titanic$Survived <- SurvivedFactor

# Create the variable SurvBin in which 1 indicates a passenger


# survived and 0 indicates a passenger did not survive:

titanic$SurvBin = ifelse(titanic$Survived == "Yes", 1, 0)

head(titanic) # display the first 6 rows of data

Writing a Formula
When you answer a bivariate question about the association between two variables, you’ll need to
visualize or summarize a variable for different values of one or more other variables. For example,
if you want to understand the association between a passenger’s sex and their survival, SurvBin
will be grouped by Sex. In this scenario, your formula is:
SurvBin ~ Sex.
When you answer a multivariate question, you are assessing one variable in terms of multiple other
variables. For example, if you want to understand how a passenger’s class influences the association
of SurvBin and Sex, all you need to do is change the formula to add the variable PClass:
SurvBin ~ Sex + PClass.

Summarizing and Visualizing Data


© 2021 Cornell University 2
Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science
Specifying Your Command
Once you’ve determined the formula you should use, a function that contains a formula usually
looks like this:

The function you want to use.

function (Variable1 ~ Variable2 + The formula you want to use. The variables
Variable3, need to match the names of the variables
in your data set.
data = dataset)

The data set to reference.

The argument that indicates which data set


you want to reference. For some functions,
this might have another name, such as dat.
Example: aggregate()
You can use the aggregate() command to summarize passenger survival (SurvBin) across
different passenger classes (PClass). This function uses the argument FUN to indicate which
summary statistic you want to calculate. Examples of summary statistics you can calculate include
mean, median, or standard deviation (sd).

The command below on the left creates a table, prop1, that calculates the mean survival of Titanic
passengers by their sex. The command below on the right creates a table, prop2, that calculates
the mean survival of Titanic passengers by both sex and passenger class.

prop1 <- aggregate(SurvBin ~ Sex, prop2 <- aggregate(SurvBin ~ Sex + PClass,


data = titanic, data = titanic,
FUN = mean) FUN = mean)
prop1 prop2

## Sex SurvBin ## Sex PClass SurvBin


## [1] female 0.6666667 ## [1] female 1st 0.9370629
## [2] male 0.1668625 ## [2] male 1st 0.3296089
## [3] female 2nd 0.8785047
## [4] male 2nd 0.1445087
## [5] female 3rd 0.3773585
## [6] male 3rd 0.1162325

Summarizing and Visualizing Data


© 2021 Cornell University 3
Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science

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