How to delete specific rows and columns from a matrix in a smarter way?

Question

Let\'s say t1 is :

t1 <- array(1:20, dim=c(10,10))

      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7] [,8] [,9] [,10]
 [1,]    1   11    1   11    1   11          


        

Answer 1

You can use

t1<- t1[-4:-6,-7:-9]  

or

t1 <- t1[-(4:6), -(7:9)]

or

t1 <- t1[-c(4, 5, 6), -c(7, 8, 9)]

You can pass vectors to select rows/columns to be deleted. First two methods are useful if you are trying to delete contiguous rows/columns. Third method is useful if You are trying to delete discrete rows/columns.

> t1 <- array(1:20, dim=c(10,10));

> t1[-c(1, 4, 6, 7, 9), -c(2, 3, 8, 9)]

     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
[1,]    2   12    2   12    2   12
[2,]    3   13    3   13    3   13
[3,]    5   15    5   15    5   15
[4,]    8   18    8   18    8   18
[5,]   10   20   10   20   10   20

Answer 2

> S = matrix(c(1,2,3,4,5,2,1,2,3,4,3,2,1,2,3,4,3,2,1,2,5,4,3,2,1),ncol = 5,byrow = TRUE);S
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    1    2    3    4    5
[2,]    2    1    2    3    4
[3,]    3    2    1    2    3
[4,]    4    3    2    1    2
[5,]    5    4    3    2    1
> S<-S[,-2]
> S
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
[1,]    1    3    4    5
[2,]    2    2    3    4
[3,]    3    1    2    3
[4,]    4    2    1    2
[5,]    5    3    2    1

Just use the command S <- S[,-2] to remove the second column. Similarly to delete a row, for example, to delete the second row use S <- S[-2,].

Answer 3

You can also remove rows and columns by feeding a vector of logical boolean values to the matrix. This handles the situation where you have multiple non-contiguous rows or non-contiguous columns that need to be deleted.

# TRUE = Keep a row/column
# FALSE = Delete a row/column
#
# FALSE for rows 4, 5, and 6
# Row:            1     2     3     4      5      6      7     8     9     10
rows_to_keep <- c(TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE)
    
# FALSE for columns 7, 8, and 9
# Column:         1     2     3     4     5     6     7      8      9      10
cols_to_keep <- c(TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE) 

To remove just the rows:

t1 <- t1[rows_to_keep,]

To remove just the columns:

t1 <- t1[,cols_to_keep]

To remove both the rows and columns:

t1 <- t1[rows_to_keep, cols_to_keep]

This coding technique is useful if you don't know in advance what rows or columns you need to remove. The rows_to_keep and cols_to_keep vectors can be calculated as appropriate by your code.

Answer 4

You can do:

t1<- t1[-4:-6,-7:-9]