Atomic Vectors¶

So far we have seen how to create variables that store a single value only. However, in practice we almost always work with sets of many different values. To work with this type of data, we can create an atomic vector, a type of data structure in R that stores one or more values of the same type. There are two important components to this definition:

Atomic vectors can store one or more values, meaning an object that stores just a single value is an atomic vector. This means that every object we have created so far (e.g., myFirstTextVar) has been an atomic vector. Below we will see how to create atomic vectors with more than one value.
Atomic vectors cannot mix data types. For example, you cannot have an atomic vector with numbers and characters. Note that NA (which indicates a missing value) is not considered a distinct data type, so you can have atomic vectors that contain values of a particular data type as well as NAs.

Note

Atomic vectors store one or more values of the same type.

As we have seen throughout the book so far, single-value atomic vectors can be created by simply assigning a value to a variable:

v1 <- 2             # Numeric atomic vector
v2 <- TRUE          # Logical atomic vector
v3 <- "R is fun!"   # Character atomic vector

If we want to combine multiple values into a single atomic vector, we need to use the c() function, which stands for “combine”:

v4 <- c(2, 3, 4, 5)                 # Numeric atomic vector
v5 <- c(TRUE, TRUE, FALSE)          # Logical atomic vector
v6 <- c("R is fun!", "I hate R")    # Character atomic vector
v7 <- c(8, 9, 10, NA)               # Numeric atomic vector with missing value

Now that we have multiple values stored in a single atomic vector, there are many different functions we can apply to these atomic vectors.

Data Science for Managers

Atomic Vectors¶