Contingency Table in R (5 Examples)
In this R tutorial you’ll learn how to make a contingency table.
The content of the article looks like this:
Here’s the step-by-step process.
Creating Example Data
Initially, let’s construct some exemplifying data:
data <- data.frame(x1 = c(LETTERS[1:4], "A", "B", "B"), # Create example data frame x2 = c(letters[1:3], "b", "c", "c", "c")) data # Print example data frame
As you can see based on Table 1, the example data is a data frame containing seven rows and two variables.
Example 1: Create Two-way Contingency Table
This example illustrates how to make a two-way contingency table (or cross tabulation / crosstab) in the R programming language.
For this task, we can apply the table() function to our example data frame as shown in the following R code:
my_tab1 <- table(data) # Create two-way contingency table my_tab1 # Print two-way contingency table # x2 # x1 a b c # A 1 0 1 # B 0 1 2 # C 0 0 1 # D 0 1 0
The previous output of the RStudio console shows a two-way cross tabulation of the two variables in our data frame. For instance, the combination of A and a occurs once, and the combination of B and a occurs not at all.
Example 2: Draw Plot of Contingency Table
In this example, I’ll demonstrate how to draw a plot of a 2×2 contingency table.
The following R code uses the plot() function provided by Base R to create a mosaic plot of the table object we have constructed in Example 1:
plot(my_tab1) # Plot contingency table
Figure 1 shows the output of the previous R programming syntax – A mosaic graphic showing the cross tabulation of the two columns in our example data.
By the way, it is also possible to draw frequency count tables in a graph. For more info, have a look here.
Example 3: Add Margins to Contingency Table
Example 3 shows how to add the sum of each row and each column of a table object (i.e. the margins) to this table.
To achieve this, we can apply the addmargins function as illustrated below:
my_tab2 <- addmargins(my_tab1) # Add margins to contingency table my_tab2 # Print contingency table with margins # x2 # x1 a b c Sum # A 1 0 1 2 # B 0 1 2 3 # C 0 0 1 1 # D 0 1 0 1 # Sum 1 2 4 7
The previous table contains the same values as the table we have created in Example 1, plus the margins of each row and column.
Example 4: Create Contingency Table with Proportions
The following R programming syntax shows how to get a two-way contingency table with proportions (or probabilities).
To do this, we can apply the prop.table function as shown in the following R syntax:
my_tab3 <- prop.table(my_tab1) # Contingency table with proportions my_tab3 # Print contingency table with proportions # x2 # x1 a b c # A 0.1428571 0.0000000 0.1428571 # B 0.0000000 0.1428571 0.2857143 # C 0.0000000 0.0000000 0.1428571 # D 0.0000000 0.1428571 0.0000000
Example 5: Create Three-way Contingency Table
So far, we have created different types of two-way contingency tables. However, it is also possible to perform a three-way cross tabulation.
For this, we first have to extend our example data frame by another variable:
data_three <- data.frame(data, # Create data frame with three variables x3 = c(1:4, 1:3)) data_three # Print data frame with three variables
Table 2 shows the output of the previous R programming code – i.e. a data frame with three variables.
Next, we can apply the table command to this data frame to create a three-way contingency table:
my_tab4 <- table(data_three) # Create three-way contingency table my_tab4 # Print three-way contingency table # , , x3 = 1 # # x2 # x1 a b c # A 1 0 1 # B 0 0 0 # C 0 0 0 # D 0 0 0 # # , , x3 = 2 # # x2 # x1 a b c # A 0 0 0 # B 0 1 1 # C 0 0 0 # D 0 0 0 # # , , x3 = 3 # # x2 # x1 a b c # A 0 0 0 # B 0 0 1 # C 0 0 1 # D 0 0 0 # # , , x3 = 4 # # x2 # x1 a b c # A 0 0 0 # B 0 0 0 # C 0 0 0 # D 0 1 0
As you can see, the previous output has created a list object. Each element of this list shows a two-way contingency table given a certain value in the third variable of our input data.
For instance, the first list element of the previously shown list contains a two-way contingency table for the case when x3 is equal to the value 1.
Video & Further Resources
Have a look at the following video on the Statistics Globe YouTube channel. I explain the R programming codes of this article in the video.
The YouTube video will be added soon.
In addition, you may want to have a look at some of the other tutorials on this website. Some articles can be found below:
- Contingency Table Across Multiple Columns
- Extend Contingency Table with Proportions & Percentages
- How to Create a Frequency Table in R
- R Programming Overview
You have learned in this tutorial how to calculate and create a contingency table in R. Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments, if you have any further questions.
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6 Comments. Leave new
Please discuss the topic about generate And simulation from CDF not close form and How to use the panelize maximum likelihood estimation in R code
Hi Salwa,
Thank you for the topic suggestion! I’ll keep this in mind for future tutorials.
Regards,
Joachim
Hi Joachim.
Great post. It was really informative.
Could you please demonstrate how one would go about returning joint and conditional probabilities from a contingency table using R?
Regards
Neena
Hey Neena,
Thank you for the kind comment, glad you like the tutorial!
Please excuse the late response. I was on a long holiday so unfortunately I wasn’t able to reply sooner. Still need help with your code?
Regards,
Joachim
Hi Joachim,
Thank you for your response. I have managed to get the code.
Thank you once again.
Regards
Neena
Hi Neena,
That’s great to hear, glad you managed to find a solution!
Regards,
Joachim