Use a function (2)

Check the documentation on the mean() function again:

?mean

The Usage section of the documentation includes two versions of the mean() function. The first usage,

mean(x, ...)

is the most general usage of the mean function. The 'Default S3 method', however, is:

mean(x, trim = 0, na.rm = FALSE, ...)

The ... is called the ellipsis. It is a way for R to pass arguments along without the function having to name them explicitly. The ellipsis will be treated in more detail in future courses.

For the remainder of this exercise, just work with the second usage of the mean function. Notice that both trim and na.rm have default values. This makes them optional arguments.

This exercise is part of the course

Intermediate R

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Exercise instructions

Calculate the mean of the element-wise sum of linkedin and facebook and store the result in a variable avg_sum.
Calculate the mean once more, but this time set the trim argument equal to 0.2 and assign the result to avg_sum_trimmed.
Print out both avg_sum and avg_sum_trimmed; can you spot the difference?

Hands-on interactive exercise

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

# The linkedin and facebook vectors have already been created for you
linkedin <- c(16, 9, 13, 5, 2, 17, 14)
facebook <- c(17, 7, 5, 16, 8, 13, 14)

# Calculate the mean of the sum


# Calculate the trimmed mean of the sum


# Inspect both new variables

Edit and Run Code