How to Scale Values Between 0 and 1 in R

You can use the following methods to scale the values of a variable between 0 and 1 in R:

Method 1: Use base R

#define function to scale values between 0 and 1
scale_values <- function(x){(x-min(x))/(max(x)-min(x))}

x_scaled <- rescale(x)

Method 2: Use scales Package

library(scales)

x_scaled <- rescale(x)

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following data frame in R:

#create data frame
df <- data.frame(store=c('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H'),
                 sales=c(12, 24, 23, 59, 45, 34, 50, 77))

#view data frame
df

  store sales
1     A    12
2     B    24
3     C    23
4     D    59
5     E    45
6     F    34
7     G    50
8     H    77

Example 1: Scale Values Between 0 and 1 Using Base R

The following code shows how to define a custom function in base R and then use the function to scale the values in the sales column of the data frame to be between 0 and 1:

#define function to scale values between 0 and 1
scale_values <- function(x){(x-min(x))/(max(x)-min(x))}

#scale values in 'sales' column to be between 0 and 1
df$sales <- scale_values(df$sales)

#view updated data frame
df

  store     sales
1     A 0.0000000
2     B 0.1846154
3     C 0.1692308
4     D 0.7230769
5     E 0.5076923
6     F 0.3384615
7     G 0.5846154
8     H 1.0000000

Each of the values in the sales column are now scaled between 0 and 1.

This function used the following formula to scale each of the values:

Scaled value = (value – min value) / (max value – min value)

For example, the scaled value for the sales of store A was calculated as:

Scaled value = (12 – 12) / (77 – 12) = 0 / 65 = 0.

Similarly, the scaled value for the sales of store B was calculated as:

Scaled value = ( 24 – 12) / (77 – 12) = 12 / 65 = 0.1846.

And so on.

Example 2: Scale Values Between 0 and 1 Using scales Package

The following code shows how to use the rescale() function from the scales package in R to scale the values in the sales column of the data frame to be between 0 and 1:

library(scales)

#scale values in 'sales' column to be between 0 and 1
df$sales <- rescale(df$sales)

#view updated data frame
df

  store     sales
1     A 0.0000000
2     B 0.1846154
3     C 0.1692308
4     D 0.7230769
5     E 0.5076923
6     F 0.3384615
7     G 0.5846154
8     H 1.0000000

Each of the values in the sales column are now scaled between 0 and 1.

Notice that these scaled values match the ones calculated using the base R method.

Also note that the rescale() function accepts a to argument that specifies the range for the scaled values.

For example, you could use the following syntax to instead scale the values in the sales column to be between 0 and 100:

library(scales)

#scale values in 'sales' column to be between 0 and 100
df$sales <- rescale(df$sales, to=c(0,100))

#view updated data frame
df

  store     sales
1     A   0.00000
2     B  18.46154
3     C  16.92308
4     D  72.30769
5     E  50.76923
6     F  33.84615
7     G  58.46154
8     H 100.00000

Each of the values in the sales column are now scaled between 0 and 100.