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Selection by comparison - Step 1

By making use of comparison operators, we can approach the previous question in a more proactive way.

The (logical) comparison operators known to R are:

  • < for less than
  • > for greater than
  • <= for less than or equal to
  • >= for greater than or equal to
  • == for equal to each other
  • != not equal to each other

As seen in the previous chapter, stating 6 > 5 returns TRUE. The nice thing about R is that you can use these comparison operators also on vectors. For example:

c(4, 5, 6) > 5
[1] FALSE FALSE TRUE

This command tests for every element of the vector if the condition stated by the comparison operator is TRUE or FALSE.

This exercise is part of the course

Introduction to R

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Exercise instructions

  • Check which elements in poker_vector are positive (i.e. > 0) and assign this to selection_vector.
  • Print out selection_vector so you can inspect it. The printout tells you whether you won (TRUE) or lost (FALSE) any money for each day.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Poker and roulette winnings from Monday to Friday:
poker_vector <- c(140, -50, 20, -120, 240)
roulette_vector <- c(-24, -50, 100, -350, 10)
days_vector <- c("Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday")
names(poker_vector) <- days_vector
names(roulette_vector) <- days_vector

# Which days did you make money on poker?
selection_vector <- 
  
# Print out selection_vector
Edit and Run Code