Matrix ¶

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This is the same as a matrix in Math. This is a vector of vectors. The function is matrix(data, nrow, ncol).

matrix(1:6, nrow = 2, ncol = 3)
#       [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,]    1    3    5
# [2,]    2    4    6

matrix(1:6, nrow = 2, ncol = 3, byrow = T)
#       [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,]    1    2    3
# [2,]    4    5    6


Indexes ¶

This is the same as for vectors, but you got two indexes separated by a comma ,. The format is [line, column]. If you omit one, then the whole line/column will be returned (or the whole matrix if both are omitted).

m[,] # whole matrix
m[1,] # first line
m[,1] # first column
m[1,1] # value at 1,1 (first line, first column)


Sometimes, you will have to use m[i,j,drop=FALSE] because R is dereferencing your matrix to a vector.

Functions ¶

• t(m): transpose
• solve(m): inverse a matrix
• solve(A,b): solve $Ax=b$
• diag(...): create a diagonal matrix
• m1 %*% m2: scalar product
• eigen(m): eigenvalues

Utilities ¶

• dim(m): dimension
• ncol(m): number of columns
• nrow(m): number of rows
• cbind(vector1, matrix1, matrix2, vector2, ...): merge into one matrix (left to right)
• rbind(matrix1, matrix2, vector1, vector2, ...): merge into one matrix (top to bottom)
• dimnames(m): column/rows names
• colnames(m): column names
• rownames(m): rows names

As you should remember, you can override the values by placing them at the left side of the operator <-.

y <- 1:9
# a vector
# [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

# a vector with a dimension is a matrix
dim(y) <- c(3,3)
y
#     [,1] [,2] [,3]
# [1,]  1    4    7
# [2,]  2    5    8
# [3,]  3    6    9