What's a matrix?

In R, a matrix is a collection of elements of the same data type (numeric, character, or

logical) arranged into a fixed number of rows and columns. Since you are only working
with rows and columns, a matrix is called two-dimensional.

You can construct a matrix in R with the matrix() function. Consider the following
example:

matrix(1:9, byrow = TRUE, nrow = 3)

In the matrix() function:

 The first argument is the collection of elements that R will arrange into the rows
and columns of the matrix. Here, we use 1:9 which is a shortcut for c(1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).
 The argument byrow indicates that the matrix is filled by the rows. If we want the
matrix to be filled by the columns, we just place byrow = FALSE.
 The third argument nrow indicates that the matrix should have three rows.

Code:

# Construct a matrix with 3 rows that contain the numbers 1 up to 9

matrix(1:9,byrow=TRUE,nrow=3)
Analyze matrices, you shall
It is now time to get your hands dirty. In the following exercises you will analyze the box
office numbers of the Star Wars franchise. May the force be with you!

In the editor, three vectors are defined. Each one represents the box office numbers
from the first three Star Wars movies. The first element of each vector indicates the US
box office revenue, the second element refers to the Non-US box office (source:
Wikipedia).

In this exercise, you'll combine all these figures into a single vector. Next, you'll build a
matrix from this vector.

Instructions
100 XP

 Use c(new_hope, empire_strikes, return_jedi) to combine the three vectors into

one vector. Call this vector box_office.
 Construct a matrix with 3 rows, where each row represents a movie. Use
the matrix() function to do this. The first argument is the vector box_office,
containing all box office figures. Next, you'll have to specify nrow = 3 and byrow =
TRUE. Name the resulting matrix star_wars_matrix.

Code:

# Box office Star Wars (in millions!)

new_hope <- c(460.998, 314.4)

empire_strikes <- c(290.475, 247.900)

return_jedi <- c(309.306, 165.8)

# Create box_office

box_office <- c(new_hope, empire_strikes, return_jedi)

# Construct star_wars_matrix

star_wars_matrix <- matrix(box_office,byrow=TRUE,nrow=3)

Naming a matrix
To help you remember what is stored in star_wars_matrix, you would like to add the
names of the movies for the rows. Not only does this help you to read the data, but it is
also useful to select certain elements from the matrix.

Similar to vectors, you can add names for the rows and the columns of a matrix

rownames(my_matrix) <- row_names_vector

colnames(my_matrix) <- col_names_vector

We went ahead and prepared two vectors for you: region, and titles. You will need
these vectors to name the columns and rows of star_wars_matrix, respectively.

Code:

# Box office Star Wars (in millions!)

new_hope <- c(460.998, 314.4)

empire_strikes <- c(290.475, 247.900)

return_jedi <- c(309.306, 165.8)

# Construct matrix

star_wars_matrix <- matrix(c(new_hope, empire_strikes, return_jedi), nrow = 3, byrow = TRUE)

# Vectors region and titles, used for naming

region <- c("US", "non-US")

titles <- c("A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", "Return of the Jedi")

# Name the columns with region

colnames(star_wars_matrix) <- region

# Name the rows with titles

rownames(star_wars_matrix) <- titles

# Print out star_wars_matrix

star_wars_matrix
Calculating the worldwide box office
The single most important thing for a movie in order to become an instant legend in
Tinseltown is its worldwide box office figures.

To calculate the total box office revenue for the three Star Wars movies, you have to
take the sum of the US revenue column and the non-US revenue column.

In R, the function rowSums() conveniently calculates the totals for each row of a matrix.
This function creates a new vector:

rowSums(my_matrix)

Code:

# Construct star_wars_matrix

box_office <- c(460.998, 314.4, 290.475, 247.900, 309.306, 165.8)

star_wars_matrix <- matrix(box_office, nrow = 3, byrow = TRUE,

dimnames = list(c("A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", "Return of the Jedi"),

c("US", "non-US")))

# Calculate worldwide box office figures

worldwide_vector <- rowSums(star_wars_matrix)

Adding a column for the Worldwide box
office
In the previous exercise you calculated the vector that contained the worldwide box
office receipt for each of the three Star Wars movies. However, this vector is not yet part
of star_wars_matrix.

You can add a column or multiple columns to a matrix with the cbind() function, which
merges matrices and/or vectors together by column. For example:

big_matrix <- cbind(matrix1, matrix2, vector1 ...)

Instructions
100 XP

Add worldwide_vector as a new column to the star_wars_matrix and assign the result
to all_wars_matrix. Use the cbind() function.

Code:

# Construct star_wars_matrix

box_office <- c(460.998, 314.4, 290.475, 247.900, 309.306, 165.8)

star_wars_matrix <- matrix(box_office, nrow = 3, byrow = TRUE,

dimnames = list(c("A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", "Return of the Jedi"),

c("US", "non-US")))

# The worldwide box office figures

worldwide_vector <- rowSums(star_wars_matrix)

# Bind the new variable worldwide_vector as a column to star_wars_matrix

all_wars_matrix <- cbind(star_wars_matrix,worldwide_vector)

Adding a row
Just like every action has a reaction, every cbind() has an rbind(). (We admit, we are
pretty bad with metaphors.)

Your R workspace, where all variables you defined 'live' (check out what a workspace
is), has already been initialized and contains two matrices:

 star_wars_matrix that we have used all along, with data on the original trilogy,
 star_wars_matrix2, with similar data for the prequels trilogy.

Type the name of these matrices in the console and hit Enter if you want to have a
closer look. If you want to check out the contents of the workspace, you can type ls() in
the console.

Instructions
100 XP

Use rbind() to paste together star_wars_matrix and star_wars_matrix2, in this order.

Assign the resulting matrix to all_wars_matrix.

Code:

# star_wars_matrix and star_wars_matrix2 are available in your workspace

star_wars_matrix

star_wars_matrix2

# Combine both Star Wars trilogies in one matrix

all_wars_matrix <- rbind(star_wars_matrix,star_wars_matrix2)

The total box office revenue for the
entire saga
Just like cbind() has rbind(), colSums() has rowSums(). Your R workspace already
contains the all_wars_matrix that you constructed in the previous exercise;
type all_wars_matrixto have another look. Let's now calculate the total box office
revenue for the entire saga.

Code:

# all_wars_matrix is available in your workspace

all_wars_matrix

# Total revenue for US and non-US

total_revenue_vector <- colSums(all_wars_matrix)

# Print out total_revenue_vector

total_revenue_vector
Selection of matrix elements
Similar to vectors, you can use the square brackets [ ] to select one or multiple
elements from a matrix. Whereas vectors have one dimension, matrices have two
dimensions. You should therefore use a comma to separate the rows you want to select
from the columns. For example:

 my_matrix[1,2] selects the element at the first row and second column.
 my_matrix[1:3,2:4] results in a matrix with the data on the rows 1, 2, 3 and
columns 2, 3, 4.

If you want to select all elements of a row or a column, no number is needed before or
after the comma, respectively:

 my_matrix[,1] selects all elements of the first column.

 my_matrix[1,] selects all elements of the first row.

Back to Star Wars with this newly acquired knowledge! As in the previous
exercise, all_wars_matrix is already available in your workspace.

 Select the non-US revenue for all movies (the entire second column
of all_wars_matrix), store the result as non_us_all.
 Use mean() on non_us_all to calculate the average non-US revenue for all
movies. Simply print out the result.
 This time, select the non-US revenue for the first two movies in all_wars_matrix.
Store the result as non_us_some.
 Use mean() again to print out the average of the values in non_us_some.

Code:

# all_wars_matrix is available in your workspace

all_wars_matrix

# Select the non-US revenue for all movies

non_us_all <- all_wars_matrix[,2]

# Average non-US revenue

mean(non_us_all)

# Select the non-US revenue for first two movies

non_us_some <- all_wars_matrix[1:2,2]

# Average non-US revenue for first two movies

mean(non_us_some)

A little arithmetic with matrices

Similar to what you have learned with vectors, the standard operators like +, -, /, *, etc.
work in an element-wise way on matrices in R.

For example, 2 * my_matrix multiplies each element of my_matrix by two.

As a newly-hired data analyst for Lucasfilm, it is your job to find out how many visitors
went to each movie for each geographical area. You already have the total revenue
figures in all_wars_matrix. Assume that the price of a ticket was 5 dollars. Simply
dividing the box office numbers by this ticket price gives you the number of visitors.

Code:

# all_wars_matrix is available in your workspace

all_wars_matrix

# Estimate the visitors

visitors <- all_wars_matrix / 5

# Print the estimate to the console

visitors
A little arithmetic with matrices (2)
Just like 2 * my_matrix multiplied every element of my_matrix by two, my_matrix1 *
my_matrix2 creates a matrix where each element is the product of the corresponding
elements in my_matrix1 and my_matrix2.

After looking at the result of the previous exercise, big boss Lucas points out that the
ticket prices went up over time. He asks to redo the analysis based on the prices you
can find in ticket_prices_matrix (source: imagination).

Those who are familiar with matrices should note that this is not the standard matrix
multiplication for which you should use %*% in R.

Code:

# all_wars_matrix and ticket_prices_matrix are available in your workspace

all_wars_matrix

ticket_prices_matrix

# Estimated number of visitors

visitors <- all_wars_matrix / ticket_prices_matrix

# US visitors

us_visitors <- visitors[,1]

# Average number of US visitors

mean(us_visitors)