How do you calculate the square of a value in R?

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There are three ways to calculate the square of a value in R:

Method 1: Use ^

x^2

Method 2: Use **

x**2

Method 3: Use *

x*x

Note that each of these methods will work with a single value, a vector, or a data frame.

The following examples show how to use each method in practice.

Example1: Calculate Square Using ^

The following code shows how to calculate the square of a single value using the ^ symbol:

#define variable
x <- 5

#calculate square of variable
x^2

[1] 25

The following code shows how to calculate the square of each value in a vector using the ^ symbol:

#define vector
x <- c(2, 5, 6, 9)

#calculate square of each value in vector
x^2

[1]  4 25 36 81

The following code shows how to calculate the square of each value in a data frame using the ^ symbol:

#define data frame
x <- data.frame(A=c(2, 4, 5, 7, 8),
                B=c(3, 3, 5, 9, 12),
                C=c(7, 7, 8, 9, 15))

#view data frame
x

  A  B  C
1 2  3  7
2 4  3  7
3 5  5  8
4 7  9  9
5 8 12 15

#calculate square of each value in data frame
x^2

   A   B   C
1  4   9  49
2 16   9  49
3 25  25  64
4 49  81  81
5 64 144 225

Example 2: Calculate Square Using **

#define variable
x <- 5

#calculate square of variable
x**2

[1] 25

The following code shows how to calculate the square of each value in a vector using the ** symbol:

#define vector
x <- c(2, 5, 6, 9)

#calculate square of each value in vector
x**2

[1]  4 25 36 81

The following code shows how to calculate the square of each value in a data frame using the ** symbol:

#define data frame
x <- data.frame(A=c(2, 4, 5, 7, 8),
                B=c(3, 3, 5, 9, 12),
                C=c(7, 7, 8, 9, 15))

#view data frame
x

  A  B  C
1 2  3  7
2 4  3  7
3 5  5  8
4 7  9  9
5 8 12 15

#calculate square of each value in data frame
x**2

   A   B   C
1  4   9  49
2 16   9  49
3 25  25  64
4 49  81  81
5 64 144 225

Example 3: Calculate Square Using *

The following code shows how to calculate the square of a single value using the * symbol:

#define variable
x <- 5

#calculate square of variable
x*x

[1] 25

The following code shows how to calculate the square of each value in a vector using the * symbol:

#define vector
x <- c(2, 5, 6, 9)

#calculate square of each value in vector
x*x

[1]  4 25 36 81

The following code shows how to calculate the square of each value in a data frame using the * symbol:

#define data frame
x <- data.frame(A=c(2, 4, 5, 7, 8),
                B=c(3, 3, 5, 9, 12),
                C=c(7, 7, 8, 9, 15))

#view data frame
x

  A  B  C
1 2  3  7
2 4  3  7
3 5  5  8
4 7  9  9
5 8 12 15

#calculate square of each value in data frame
x*x

   A   B   C
1  4   9  49
2 16   9  49
3 25  25  64
4 49  81  81
5 64 144 225

Notice that all three methods produce the same result.

Feel free to use whichever method you prefer.

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R: