How to Calculate the Product of Vector Elements in R

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To calculate the product in R, you can use the “prod()” function. The prod() function in R is “used to calculate the product of the individual elements in the vector specified as its arguments”.

Syntax

prod(…, na.rm = FALSE)

Parameters

  1. …: They are numeric or complex, or logical vectors.
  2. na.rm: It is a logical argument. Whether missing values be removed or not.

Return value

It returns the product, a numeric (of type “double”) or complex vector of length one.

Example 1: Finding a product of the vector

Let’s define a numeric vector and calculate its product.

data <- 4:8

cat("The product of a vector is: ", "\n")

product <- prod(data)

cat(product)

Output

The product of a vector is: 

6720

That’s it. This is how you calculate the product of a vector in R.

Example 2: Finding a product of complex vectors

To calculate the product of complex vectors in R, use the “prod()” function. The prod() method takes a complex vector as an argument and returns its product.

complex <- c(1+1i, 2+3i)

cat("The product of a complex vector is: ", "\n")

complexprod <- prod(complex)

cat(complexprod)

Output

The product of a complex vector is:

-1+5i

This is how you can calculate the product of complex vectors.

Example 3: Passing na.rm = FALSE

If na.rm is FALSE, an NA value in any of the arguments will cause a value of NA to be returned. Otherwise, NA values are ignored.

complex <- c(1+1i, NA)

cat("The product of a complex vector is: ", "\n")

complexprod <- prod(complex, na.rm = FALSE)

cat(complexprod)

Output

The product of a complex vector is:

NA

You can see that if we pass na.rm = FALSE and the vector contains an NA value, then it will return NA without any doubt.

But, if we pass na.rm = TRUE, it will ignore the NA value and calculate the remaining values’ product.

complex <- c(1+1i, NA)

cat("The product of a complex vector is: ", "\n")

complexprod <- prod(complex, na.rm = TRUE)

cat(complexprod)

Output

The product of a complex vector is:

1+1i

And we get the output even if it contains an NA value.

That’s it.

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