How to Generate a Sample Using the Sample Function in R?

In this article, we will discuss how to generate a sample using the sample function in R.

Sample() function is used to generate the random elements from the given data with or without replacement.

Syntax:

sample(data, size, replace = FALSE, prob = NULL)

where,

• data can be a vector or a dataframe
• size represents the size of the sample
• replace is used to set the values again repeated if it is set to true
• prob: a vector of probability weights for obtaining the elements of the vector being sampled

Example 1: Generate sample data from the vector

Here, we will generate the n sample data from the given vector with 11 elements using the sample function.

Output:

[1] 45 7 5 34
[1] 3
[1] 5 23 8 21 6 45

Example 2: Generate sample data from the vector by replacing

Here we are going to create a vector with 11 elements and generate the sample data with a replacement.

Output:

[1] 45 5 5 3
[1] 86
[1] 5 5 8 7 8 45

Example 3: Sampling with Uneven Probabilities Using sample Function

Here we are going to select the elements with higher probability than others by setting the probability using the prob parameter.

Output:

 [1] 23 23 23 23 23 45 23 23 23 23

Example 4: Random Sampling of Data Frame Rows Using sample Function

Here we are going to sample the dataframe, let us create a dataframe and sample the rows.

Output:

Example 5: Random Sampling of List Elements Using sample Function

Here we are going to sample the data in the list  with size 4

Output:

[[1]]
[1] 2

[[2]]
[1] 1

[[3]]
[1] 4

[[4]]
[1] 6