Scale only certain columns R

Question

How can I scale(x) only certain columns of a dataframe? I have a dataframe with 7 columns and I want to scale only column 3 and 6. The rest should stay as it is.

Possible duplicate of [scale() R function equivalent in Octave/Matlab](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37378168/scale-r-function-equivalent-in-octave-matlab) — Ale, Apr 19 '18 at 15:22
Duplicate of: [R Apply() function on specific dataframe columns](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18503177/r-apply-function-on-specific-dataframe-columns) — Ian Campbell, Apr 12 '22 at 00:21

score 23 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 19 '18 at 15:22

23

We can do this with lapply. Subset the columns of interest, loop through them with lapply, assign the output back to the subset of data. Here, we are using c because the outpuf of scale is a matrix with a single column. Using c or as.vector, it gets converted to vector

df[c(3,6)] <- lapply(df[c(3, 6), function(x) c(scale(x)))

Or another option is mutate_at from dplyr

library(dplyr)
df %>%
   mutate_at(c(3,6), funs(c(scale(.))))

answered Apr 19 '18 at 15:22

akrun

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Thank you for the fast and easy answer! – RenaSo Apr 19 '18 at 15:24
6

Late answer, but you could also simply use `df[c(3, 6)] <- scale(df[c(3, 6)])` – Nick Aug 28 '19 at 12:35
df %>% mutate_at(c(3,6), scale) – MattG Sep 30 '21 at 17:34

Scale only certain columns R

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