A vector is a one-dimensional data structure used to store data of the same type in R. Numeric vectors are commonly used to store a sequence of numbers. In this tutorial, we will look at how to get the sum of values in an R vector with the help of some examples.
How to get the sum of values in a vector in R?
You can use the R sum()
function to get the sum of values in a vector. Pass the vector as an argument to the function. The following is the syntax –
# sum of values in a vector sum(vec, na.rm=FALSE)
It also takes an additional (optional) argument, na.rm
to indicate whether to remove missing values when computing the sum. It is FALSE
by default.
The function returns the sum of values in the passed vector.
Examples
Let’s look at some examples of using the above method to get the sum of values in a vector.
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Sum of values in a numeric vector
Let’s create a vector of numbers (and without any NA
values) and apply the sum()
function.
# create a vector vec <- c(1, 2, 3) # sum of values in vector sum(vec)
Output:
6
We get the sum as 6, which is the correct sum of the values in the above vector, 1+2+3=6.
What would happen if there are some NA
present values in the vector? Let’s find out. First, we will create a vector with some NA
values and then apply the sum()
function without any additional arguments.
# create a vector with NA values vec <- c(1, 2, NA, 3, NA) # sum of values in vector sum(vec)
Output:
<NA>
You can see that we get NA
as the output. This is because summing anything with NA
results in NA
in R.
Sum of values in a vector with NA
values
You can pass TRUE
to the na.rm
parameter of the sum()
function to exclude missing values when computing the sum in a vector.
# create a vector with NA values vec <- c(1, 2, NA, 3, NA) # sum of values in vector sum(vec, na.rm=TRUE)
Output:
6
Now we get the sum of values in the above vector as 6.
You might also be interested in –
- Create a Vector in R – With Examples
- R – Get Element by Index in a Vector
- How to Print a Vector in R?
- R – Get the Length of a Vector
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