7 Setup: Function Basics
Purpose: Functions are our primary tool in carying out data analysis with the
tidyverse
. It is unreasonable to expect yourself to memorize every function
and all its details. To that end, we’ll learn some basic function literacy in
R; how to inspect a function, look up its documentation, and find examples on a
function’s use.
Reading: Programming Basics.
Topics: functions
, arguments
Reading Time: ~ 10 minutes
7.0.2 q2 How do you show the source code for a function?
## function (n, mean = 0, sd = 1)
## .Call(C_rnorm, n, mean, sd)
## <bytecode: 0x7fd6458d8b00>
## <environment: namespace:stats>
7.0.3 q3 Using either the documentation or the source, determine the arguments for rnorm
.
The arguments for rnorm
are:
n
: The number of samples to drawmean
: The mean of the normalsd
: The standard deviation of the normal
7.0.4 q4 Scroll to the bottom of the help for the library()
function. How do you
list all available packages?
Calling library()
without arguments lists all the available packages.
The examples in the help documentation are often extremely helpful for learning how to use a function (or reminding yourself how its used)! Get used to checking the examples, as they’re a great resource.