Sample random rows in dataframe

Solution 1:

First make some data:

> df = data.frame(matrix(rnorm(20), nrow=10))
> df
           X1         X2
1   0.7091409 -1.4061361
2  -1.1334614 -0.1973846
3   2.3343391 -0.4385071
4  -0.9040278 -0.6593677
5   0.4180331 -1.2592415
6   0.7572246 -0.5463655
7  -0.8996483  0.4231117
8  -1.0356774 -0.1640883
9  -0.3983045  0.7157506
10 -0.9060305  2.3234110

Then select some rows at random:

> df[sample(nrow(df), 3), ]
           X1         X2
9  -0.3983045  0.7157506
2  -1.1334614 -0.1973846
10 -0.9060305  2.3234110

Solution 2:

The answer John Colby gives is the right answer. However if you are a dplyr user there is also the answer sample_n:

sample_n(df, 10)

randomly samples 10 rows from the dataframe. It calls sample.int, so really is the same answer with less typing (and simplifies use in the context of magrittr since the dataframe is the first argument).