Randomly insert NAs into dataframe proportionaly - r

Question

I have a complete dataframe. I want to 20% of the values in the dataframe to be replaced by NAs to simulate random missing data.
A <- c(1:10)
B <- c(11:20)
C <- c(21:30)
df<- data.frame(A,B,C)
Can anyone suggest a quick way of doing that?

Answer 1

df <- data.frame(A = 1:10, B = 11:20, c = 21:30)
head(df)
## A B c
## 1 1 11 21
## 2 2 12 22
## 3 3 13 23
## 4 4 14 24
## 5 5 15 25
## 6 6 16 26
as.data.frame(lapply(df, function(cc) cc[ sample(c(TRUE, NA), prob = c(0.85, 0.15), size = length(cc), replace = TRUE) ]))
## A B c
## 1 1 11 21
## 2 2 12 22
## 3 3 13 23
## 4 4 14 24
## 5 5 NA 25
## 6 6 16 26
## 7 NA 17 27
## 8 8 18 28
## 9 9 19 29
## 10 10 20 30
It's a random process, so it might not give 15% every time.

Answer 2

You can unlist the data.frame and then take a random sample, then put back in a data.frame.
df <- unlist(df)
n <- length(df) * 0.15
df[sample(df, n)] <- NA
as.data.frame(matrix(df, ncol=3))
It can be done a bunch of different ways using sample().

Answer 3

If you are in the mood to use purrr instead of lapply, you can also do it like this:
> library(purrr)
> df <- data.frame(A = 1:10, B = 11:20, C = 21:30)
> df
A B C
1 1 11 21
2 2 12 22
3 3 13 23
4 4 14 24
5 5 15 25
6 6 16 26
7 7 17 27
8 8 18 28
9 9 19 29
10 10 20 30
> map_df(df, function(x) {x[sample(c(TRUE, NA), prob = c(0.8, 0.2), size = length(x), replace = TRUE)]})
# A tibble: 10 x 3
A B C
<int> <int> <int>
1 1 11 21
2 2 12 22
3 NA 13 NA
4 4 14 NA
5 5 15 25
6 6 16 26
7 7 17 27
8 8 NA 28
9 9 19 29
10 10 20 30

Answer 4

Same result, using binomial distribution:
dd=dim(df)
nna=20/100 #overall
df1<-df
df1[matrix(rbinom(prod(dd), size=1,prob=nna)==1,nrow=dd[1])]<-NA
df1

Answer 5

May i suggest a first function (ggNAadd) designed to do this, and improve it with a second function providing graphical distribution of the NAs created (ggNA)
What is neat is the possibility to input either a proportion of a fixed number of NAs.
ggNAadd = function(data, amount, plot=F){
temp <- data
amount2 <- ifelse(amount<1, round(prod(dim(data))*amount), amount)
if (amount2 >= prod(dim(data))) stop("exceeded data size")
for (i in 1:amount2) temp[sample.int(nrow(temp), 1), sample.int(ncol(temp), 1)] <- NA
if (plot) print(ggNA(temp))
return(temp)
}
And the plotting function:
ggNA = function(data, alpha=0.5){
require(ggplot2)
DF <- data
if (!is.matrix(data)) DF <- as.matrix(DF)
to.plot <- cbind.data.frame('y'=rep(1:nrow(DF), each=ncol(DF)),
'x'=as.logical(t(is.na(DF)))*rep(1:ncol(DF), nrow(DF)))
size <- 20 / log( prod(dim(DF)) ) # size of point depend on size of table
g <- ggplot(data=to.plot) + aes(x,y) +
geom_point(size=size, color="red", alpha=alpha) +
scale_y_reverse() + xlim(1,ncol(DF)) +
ggtitle("location of NAs in the data frame") +
xlab("columns") + ylab("lines")
pc <- round(sum(is.na(DF))/prod(dim(DF))*100, 2) # % NA
print(paste("percentage of NA data: ", pc))
return(g)
}
Which gives (using ggplot2 as graphical output):
ggNAadd(df, amount=0.20, plot=TRUE)
## [1] "percentage of NA data: 20"
## A B c
## 1 1 11 21
## 2 2 12 22
## 3 3 13 23
## 4 4 NA 24
## ..
Of course, as mentioned earlier, if you ask too many NAs the actual percentage will drop because of repetitions.

Answer 6

A mutate_all approach:
df %>%
dplyr::mutate_all(~ifelse(sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), size = length(.), replace = TRUE, prob = c(0.8, 0.2)),
as.character(.), NA))