Repeatedly Evaluate an Expression in R Programming – replicate() Function

replicate() function in R Language is used to repeatedly evaluate a function or expression. It is member of apply family in R base package. In this article, we’ll learn syntax and implementation of replicate() function with the help of examples.

Syntax: replicate(n, expr, simplify)

Parameters:
n: represents number of times the expression has to be evaluated
expr: represents expression
simplify: represents logical value. If TRUE, output is represented in vector or matrix form, otherwise in a list form

Example 1:

# Set the seed
set.seed(10)

# Generate random numbers with mean = 0 and sd = 1
x <- rnorm(5, mean = 0, sd = 1)

# Print
print(x)

# Evaluating it repeatedly
r <- replicate(n = 3, rnorm(5, 0, 1), simplify = FALSE )

# Print
print(r)

Output:

[1]  0.01874617 -0.18425254 -1.37133055 -0.59916772  0.29454513

[[1]]
[1]  0.3897943 -1.2080762 -0.3636760 -1.6266727 -0.2564784

[[2]]
[1]  1.1017795  0.7557815 -0.2382336  0.9874447  0.7413901

[[3]]
[1]  0.08934727 -0.95494386 -0.19515038  0.92552126  0.48297852

Example 2:

# Output to be present as PNG file
png(file = "replicateGFG.png")

# Set the seed
set.seed(10)

# Replicate values and create histogram
hist(replicate(100, mean(rexp(10))))

# Saving the file
dev.off()

Output:

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