How to succinctly write a formula with many variables from a data frame?

Question

Suppose I have a response variable and a data containing three covariates (as a toy example):

y = c(1,4,6)
d = data.frame(x1 = c(4,-1,3), x2 = c(3,9,8), x3 =         


        

Answer 1

There is a special identifier that one can use in a formula to mean all the variables, it is the . identifier.

y <- c(1,4,6)
d <- data.frame(y = y, x1 = c(4,-1,3), x2 = c(3,9,8), x3 = c(4,-4,-2))
mod <- lm(y ~ ., data = d)

You can also do things like this, to use all variables but one (in this case x3 is excluded):

mod <- lm(y ~ . - x3, data = d)

Technically, . means all variables not already mentioned in the formula. For example

lm(y ~ x1 * x2 + ., data = d)

where . would only reference x3 as x1 and x2 are already in the formula.