Practicing with Custom Functions

R Programming

A hands‑on exercise in which participants practice writing custom R functions and nesting functions.

Authors

Meeta Mistry

Mary Piper

Radhika Khetani

Published

May 30, 2025

Keywords

R, custom functions, nesting functions

Exercises

  1. Custom Functions - Let’s create a function temp_conv(), which converts the temperature in Fahrenheit (input) to the temperature in Kelvin (output). Let’s perform a two-step calculation: first convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and then convert from Celsius to Kelvin.

    • The formula for celsius to farenheight: temp_c = (temp_f - 32) * 5 / 9
    • The formula for celsius to kelvin: temp_k = temp_c + 273.15
    • Test your function. If your input is 70, the result of temp_conv(70) should be 294.2611.

  2. Nesting Functions - Now we want to round the temperature in Kelvin (output of temp_conv()) to a single decimal place.

    • Use the round() function with the newly-created temp_conv() function to achieve this in one line of code.
    • If your input is 70, the output should now be 294.3.

Reuse

CC-BY-4.0