How to Compute the Mean of a Data Frame Variable in R (2 Examples)

In this post you’ll learn how to compute the average of a variable in the R programming language.

Creation of Example Data

data(iris)                              # Loading iris data frame
head(iris)
#   Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
# 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 2          4.9         3.0          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2  setosa
# 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2  setosa
# 5          5.0         3.6          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4  setosa

Example 1: Computing Mean of Column with $-Operator

mean(iris$Petal.Width)                  # Using mean function and $-operator
# 1.199333

Example 2: Computing Mean of Column that Contains Missing Values

iris$Petal.Width[c(5, 9, 20)] <- NA     # Insert missing data
mean(iris$Petal.Width, na.rm = TRUE)    # Using mean function and na.rm argument
# 1.219048

Further Resources & Related Tutorials

Have a look at the following R tutorials. They illustrate topics such as indices, data conversion, numeric values, and naming data.

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