The “diff” Function in R

• Package: Base R (No specific package, it’s a built-in function)

• Purpose: To compute differences between consecutive elements in a numeric vector.

• General Class: Mathematical Computation

• Required Argument(s):

• x: A numeric vector for which the differences between consecutive elements are to be computed.

• Notable Optional Arguments:

• lag: An integer specifying the number of lags to use. The default is 1, which computes differences between consecutive elements.

• Example:

• # Example usage
  my_vector <- c(2, 4, 7, 11, 16)
  differences <- diff(my_vector)
  
  print(differences)

• In this example, diff is a built-in function in base R, and it is used to compute the differences between consecutive elements in a numeric vector. The x argument is the only required argument, and it represents the numeric vector for which the differences are calculated. The lag argument is optional and allows you to specify the number of lags to use when computing differences. The result is a numeric vector representing the differences between consecutive elements.