How to Calculate Five Number Summary in R?

In this article, we will discuss how to calculate five number summary in R programming language.

Five number summary is also known as a boxplot. it will return five values that are :

• The minimum value present in the given data
• The first quartile value present in the given data
• The median  value present in the given data
• The third quartile value  present in the given data
• The maximum value present in the given data

Method 1 : Using fivenum()

This function will get the five-number summary of the given data

Syntax:

fivenum(data)

Example 1: Get the fivenumber summary of the vector

# create the vector with 10 elements
data=c(1:10)

# get five summary
print(fivenum(data))

Output:

[1]  1.0  3.0  5.5  8.0 10.0

Example 2: Get the fivenumber summary in the dataframe

# create the dataframe with 4 columns
data=data.frame(col1=c(1:10),col2=c(23:32),
                col3=c(11:20),col4=c(34:43))

# display
print(data)

# get five summary of col1
print(fivenum(data$col1))

# get five summary of col2
print(fivenum(data$col2))

# get five summary of col3
print(fivenum(data$col3))

# get five summary of col4
print(fivenum(data$col4))

Output:

We can also get fivenumber summary from multiple columns at a time by using sapply with fivenum() function

Syntax:

sapply(dataframe[c 1="'column2',.......," 2="'column" 3="n')" language="('column1',"][/c], fivenum)

Example: Get fivenumber summary from multiple columns at a time

# create the dataframe with 4 columns
data=data.frame(col1=c(1:10),col2=c(23:32),
                col3=c(11:20),col4=c(34:43))

# display
print(data)

# get five summary of col1,col2,col3
print(sapply(data[c('col1','col2','col3')], fivenum))

Output:

Method 2: Using boxplot()

This will generate a plot that represents minimum, maximum, median, first, and third quartiles

Syntax:

boxplot(data)

Example: Get the fivenum summary of the vector

# create the vector with 10 elements
data=c(1:10)

# get five summary
print(boxplot(data))

Output: