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Base functions are a set of functions in the R programming language that are included in the base package, which is automatically installed and loaded when the R problem executes. These functions provide a wide range of functionality, including mathematical operations, statistical functions, data manipulation, and input/output operations.

In this article, I will explain some R base functions from the R Programming Language.

R Mathematical Functions

R Base Package has a wide range of built-in mathematical functions that can be used to perform various types of mathematical operations, such as arithmetic, algebraic, trigonometric, and statistical functions.

The R Arithmetic operations are +, -, *, /, ^, %/%, %% and below are some algebraic functions.

R Mathematical FunctionsDescription
abs()Calculate the absolute value of a numeric vector.
sqrt()Calculate the square root of a numeric vector.
round()Calculate the round of a numeric vector.
ceiling()Round numbers up to the nearest integer.
floor()Round numeric values to the nearest integer.
sign()Returns -1 for negative values,
Returns 1 for positive values,
And 0 for zero.
exp()Calculate the exponential value of a numeric vector.
log(), log10()Calculate the natural logarithm of a numeric vector.
R Base Package Mathematical Functions

These are just a few examples, and there are many more mathematical functions available in R. You can find a complete list of mathematical functions in the R documentation or by typing help(math) in the R console.

R Statistical functions

R also has a wide range of built-in statistical functions that can be used to perform various types of statistical analyses, such as computing descriptive statistics, testing hypotheses, and fitting statistical models.

Besides R base functions, you can also use specialized packages in R, such as the stats package, to access additional statistical functions.

Here are some examples of common statistical functions in R.

R Statistical functionsDescription
mean()
median()
mode()
sd()
var()
quantile()
range()
max()
min()
sum()
prod()
R Base Package Statistical Functions

You can find a complete list of statistical functions in the R documentation or by typing help(stats) in the R console.

R Input / Output Functions

R Input/Output FunctionsDescription
read.csv()
read.table()
write.csv()
write.table()
cat()
scan()
readLines()
paste()
format()
print(), sprintf(), print()
source()

Data Manipulation

These data manipulation functions are pretty much used with Data Frames, Vectors, Lists, Matrices, and other R objects.

Base FunctionsDescription
with()
within()
head()
tail()
sort()
order()
unique()
duplicated()
which()
match()
table()
length()
nrow()
ncol()
attributes()
summary()
names()
is.na()
is.nan()
is.integer()
is.numeric()
is.complex()
is.character()
is.logical()
is.matrix()
is.array()
is.null()
is.data.frame()
is.vector()
is.list()
is.recursive()
R Base Functions

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned different R base package functions. Functions from the R base package are automatically installed and available to use by default. These functions provide a wide range of functionality, including mathematical operations, statistical functions, data manipulation, and input/output operation

Naveen Nelamali

Naveen Nelamali (NNK) is a Data Engineer with 20+ years of experience in transforming data into actionable insights. Over the years, He has honed his expertise in designing, implementing, and maintaining data pipelines with frameworks like Apache Spark, PySpark, Pandas, R, Hive and Machine Learning. Naveen journey in the field of data engineering has been a continuous learning, innovation, and a strong commitment to data integrity. In this blog, he shares his experiences with the data as he come across. Follow Naveen @ LinkedIn and Medium