Median values in R

Median values in R, the methods listed below can be used to determine the median value of rows in R:

Median values in R

Example 1: Calculate the Median of Rows Using Base R

Assume we have the data frame in R below, which displays the points earned by different basketball players throughout three distinct games:

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df <- data.frame(game1=c(110, 112, 141, 115, 106, 128, 119),
game2=c(104, 109, 113, 18, 105, 105, 127),
game3=c(19, NA, 215, 251, 226, 320, 119))
df

game1 game2 game3
1 110 104 19
2 112 109 NA
3 141 113 215
4 115 18 251
5 106 105 226
6 128 105 320
7 119 127 119

The apply() function in base R can be used to make a new column that displays the median value for each row:

df$row_median = apply(df, 1, median, na.rm=TRUE)
df

game1 game2 game3 row_median
1 110 104 19 104.0
2 112 109 NA 110.5
3 141 113 215 141.0
4 115 18 251 115.0
5 106 105 226 106.0
6 128 105 320 128.0
7 119 127 119 119.0

The median value of each row in the data frame is stored in the new column row_median.

Example 2: Calculate Median of Rows Using dplyr

Assume we have the following R data frame containing the points scored by various basketball players throughout three distinct games:

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We can use the dplyr package’s modify() method to create a new column that displays the median value of each row for numeric columns only:

library(dplyr)
df %>%
  rowwise() %>%
  mutate(row_median = median(c_across(where(is.numeric)), na.rm=TRUE))

game1 game2 game3 row_median
1 110 104 19 104
2 112 109 NA 110.
3 141 113 215 141
4 115 18 251 115
5 106 105 226 106
6 128 105 320 128
7 119 127 119 119

The new row_median column simply holds the median value of each row in the data frame for the numeric columns.

Median values in R