Question

Is there a way – other than a for loop – to generate new variables in an R dataframe, which will be all the possible 2-way interactions between the existing ones?
i.e. supposing a dataframe with three numeric variables V1, V2, V3, I would like to generate the following new variables:

Inter.V1V2 (= V1 * V2) 
Inter.V1V3 (= V1 * V3)
Inter.V2V3 (= V2 * V3)

Example using for loop :

x <- read.table(textConnection('
   V1 V2 V3 V4
1  9   25   18
2  5   20   10
3  4   30   12
4  4   34   16'
), header=TRUE)

dim.init <- dim(x)[2]
for (i in 1: (dim.init - 1) ) {
        for (j in (i + 1) : (dim.init) ) {
                x[dim(x)[2] + 1]    <- x[i] * x[j]
                names(x)[dim(x)[2]] <- paste("Inter.V",i,"V",j,sep="")

        }
}

Answer 1

Here is a one liner for you that also works if you have factors:

> model.matrix(~(V1+V2+V3+V4)^2,x)
  (Intercept) V1 V2 V3 V4 V1:V2 V1:V3 V1:V4 V2:V3 V2:V4 V3:V4
1           1  1  9 25 18     9    25    18   225   162   450
2           1  2  5 20 10    10    40    20   100    50   200
3           1  3  4 30 12    12    90    36   120    48   360
4           1  4  4 34 16    16   136    64   136    64   544
attr(,"assign")
 [1]  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10