[R] permutation/randomization

[Tobias Verbeke]

Grant Gillis wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have what I suspect might be an easy problem but I am new to R and
> stumped.  I have a data set that looks something like this
> 
> b<-c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
> x<-c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
> y<-c(9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2)
> z<-c(9,8,7,6,1,2,3,4)
> data<-cbind(x,y,z)
> row.names(data)<-c('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h')
> 
> which gives:
> 
>  x y z
> a 2 9 9
> b 3 8 8
> c 4 7 7
> d 5 6 6
> e 6 5 1
> f 7 4 2
> g 8 3 3
> h 9 2 4
> 
> I would like to randomize data within columns. The closest I have been able
> to come permutes data within the columns but keeps rows together along with
> row names(example below).  For some context, eventually I would like use
> this to generate many data sets and perform calculations on these random
> data sets (I think I know how to do this but we'll see).  So ideally I would
> like row names to remain the same (in order a through h) and column data to
> randomize within columns but independently of the other columns.  Just
> shuffle the data deck I guess
> 
> 
>> data[permute(1:length(data[,1])),]
>   x y z
> b 3 8 8
> c 4 7 7
> h 9 2 4
> e 6 5 1
> f 7 4 2
> a 2 9 9
> g 8 3 3
> d 5 6 6

I changed 'data' to 'mymat' as 'data' is a function in R (see ?data)
and added the row names after permuting:

someMatrix <- cbind(x, y, z)
permutedMat <- apply(someMatrix, 2, sample)
row.names(permutedMat)<-c('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h')
permutedMat

HTH,
Tobias