debug the if statement - r

Question

I am trying to understand the for and if-statement in r, so I run a code where I am saying that if the sum of rows are bigger than 3 then return 1 else zero:
Here is the code
set.seed(2)
x = rnorm(20)
y = 2*x
a = cbind(x,y)
hold = c()
Now comes the if-statement
for (i in nrow(a)) {
if ([i,1]+ [i,2] > 3) hold[i,] == 1
else ([i,1]+ [i,2]) <- hold[i,] == 0
return (cbind(a,hold)
}
I know that maybe combining for and if may not be ideal, but I just want to understand what is going wrong. Please keep the explanation at a dummy level:) Thanks

Answer 1

You've got some issues. #mnel covered a better way to go about doing this, I'll focus on understanding what went wrong in this attempt (but don't do it this way at all, use a vectorized solution).
Line 1
for (i in nrow(a)) {
a has 20 rows. nrow(a) is 20. Thus your code is equivalent to for (i in 20), which means i will only ever be 20.
Fix:
for (i in 1:nrow(a)) {
Line 2
if ([i,1]+ [i,2] > 3) hold[i,] == 1
[i,1] isn't anything, it's the ith row and first column of... nothing. You need to reference your data: a[i,1]
You initialized hold as a vector, c(), so it only has one dimension, not rows and columns. So we want to assign to hold[i], not hold[i,].
== is used for equality testing. = or <- are for assignment. Right now, if the >3 condition is met, then you check if hold[i,] is equal to 1. (And do nothing with the result).
Fix:
if (a[i,1]+ a[i,2] > 3) hold[i] <- 1
Line 3
else ([i,1]+ [i,2]) <- hold[i,] == 0
As above for assignment vs equality testing. (Here you used an arrow assignment, but put it in the wrong place - as if you're trying to assign to the else)
else happens whenever the if condition isn't met, you don't need to try to repeat the condition
Fix:
else hold[i] <- 0
Fixed code together:
for (i in 1:nrow(a)) {
if (a[i,1] + a[i,2] > 3) hold[i] <- 1
else hold[i] <- 0
}
You aren't using curly braces for your if and else expressions. They are not required for single-line expressions (if something do this one line). They are are required for multi-line (if something do a bunch of stuff), but I think they're a good idea to use. Also, in R, it's good practice to put the else on the same line as a } from the preceding if (inside the for loop or a function it doesn't matter, but otherwise it would, so it's good to get in the habit of always doing it). I would recommend this reformatted code:
for (i in 1:nrow(a)) {
if (a[i, 1] + a[i, 2] > 3) {
hold[i] <- 1
} else {
hold[i] <- 0
}
}
Using ifelse
ifelse() is a vectorized if-else statement in R. It is appropriate when you want to test a vector of conditions and get a result out for each one. In this case you could use it like this:
hold <- ifelse(a[, 1] + a[, 2] > 3, 1, 0)
ifelse will take care of the looping for you. If you want it as a column in your data, assign it directly (no need to initialize first)
a$hold <- ifelse(a[, 1] + a[, 2] > 3, 1, 0)

Answer 2

Such operations in R are nicely vectorised.
You haven't included a reference to the dataset you wish to index with your call to [ (eg a[i,1])
using rowSums
h <- rowSums(a) > 3

Answer 3

I am going to assume that you are new to R and trying to learn about the basic function of the for loop itself. R has fancy functions called "apply" functions that are specifically for doing basic math on each row of a data frame. I am not going to talk about these.
You want to do the following on each row of the array.
Sum the elements of the row.
Test that the sum is greater than 3.
Return a value of 1 or 0 representing the result of 2.
For 1, luckily "sum" is a built in function. It pays off to check out the built in functions within every programming language because they save you time. To sum the elements of a row, just use sum(a[row_number,]).
For 2, you are evaluating a logical statement "is x >3?" where x is the result from 1. The ">3" statement returns a value of true or false. The logical expression is a fancy "if then" statement without the "if then".
> 4>3
[1] TRUE
> 2>3
[1] FALSE
For 3, a true or false value is a data structure called a "logical" value in R. A 1 or 0 value is a data structure called a "numeric" value in R. By converting the "logical" into a "numeric", you can change the TRUE to 1's and FALSE to 0's.
> class(4>3)
[1] "logical"
> as.numeric(4>3)
[1] 1
> class(as.numeric(4>3))
[1] "numeric"
A for loop has a min, a max, a counter, and an executable. The counter starts at the min, and increments until it goes to the max. The executable will run for each run of the counter. You are starting at the first row and going to the last row. Putting all the elements together looks like this.
for (i in 1:nrow(a)){
hold[i] <- as.numeric(sum(a[i,])>3)
}