Data Carpentry for Biologists

Use and Modify with Loops (Loops)

This is a followup to Use and Modify. It is a partner exercise to Use and Modify with Apply.

  1. Write a function that takes length as an argument to get an estimate of mass values for the dinosaur Theropoda (or copy the one you wrote as part of Use and Modify). Use the equation mass <- 0.73 * length ** 3.63, where 0.73 is a and 3.63 is b. Then use a for loop over the values of the following vector of lengths to print out the estimated masses for each length.

    theropoda_lengths <- c(17.8013631070471, 20.3764452071665, 14.0743486294308, 25.65782386974, 26.0952008049675, 20.3111541103134, 17.5663244372533, 11.2563431277577, 20.081903202614, 18.6071626441984, 18.0991894513166, 23.0659685685892, 20.5798853467837, 25.6179254233558, 24.3714331573996, 26.2847248252537, 25.4753783544473, 20.4642089867304, 16.0738256364701, 20.3494171706583, 19.854399305869, 17.7889814608919, 14.8016421998303, 19.6840911485379, 19.4685885050906, 24.4807784966691, 13.3359960054899, 21.5065994598917, 18.4640304608411, 19.5861532398676, 27.084751999756, 18.9609366301798, 22.4829168046521, 11.7325716149514, 18.3758846100456, 15.537504851634, 13.4848751773738, 7.68561192214935, 25.5963348603783, 16.588285389794)

  2. Write a new version of the function that takes a and b as arguments (or copy the one you wrote as part of Use and Modify), then use a for loop over an index to print the mass estimates for the dinosaurs using the following vectors of a and b values for each dinosaur.

    a_values <- c(0.759, 0.751, 0.74, 0.746, 0.759, 0.751, 0.749, 0.751, 0.738, 0.768, 0.736, 0.749, 0.746, 0.744, 0.749, 0.751, 0.744, 0.754, 0.774, 0.751, 0.763, 0.749, 0.741, 0.754, 0.746, 0.755, 0.764, 0.758, 0.76, 0.748, 0.745, 0.756, 0.739, 0.733, 0.757, 0.747, 0.741, 0.752, 0.752, 0.748)

    b_values <- c(3.627, 3.633, 3.626, 3.633, 3.627, 3.629, 3.632, 3.628, 3.633, 3.627, 3.621, 3.63, 3.631, 3.632, 3.628, 3.626, 3.639, 3.626, 3.635, 3.629, 3.642, 3.632, 3.633, 3.629, 3.62, 3.619, 3.638, 3.627, 3.621, 3.628, 3.628, 3.635, 3.624, 3.621, 3.621, 3.632, 3.627, 3.624, 3.634, 3.621)

  3. Write a new version of the loop from Task 2 that stores the resulting masses in a vector instead of printing them out. Once the loop is finished display the resulting vector.

Expected outputs for Use and Modify with Loops: 1 2 3