r - How do I add random `NA`s into a data frame

Question

I created a data frame with random values

n <- 50
df <- data.frame(id = seq (1:n),
age = sample(c(20:90), n, rep = TRUE), 
sex = sample(c("m", "f"), n, rep = TRUE, prob = c(0.55, 0.45))
)

and would like to introduce a few NA values to simulate real world data. I am trying to use apply but cannot get there. The line

apply(subset(df,select=-id), 2, function(x) {x[sample(c(1:n),floor(n/10))]})

will retrieve random values alright, but

apply(subset(df,select=-id), 2, function(x) {x[sample(c(1:n),floor(n/10))]<-NA}) 

will not set them to NA. Have tried with and within, too.

Brute force works:

for (i in (1:floor(n/10))) {
  df[sample(c(1:n), 1), sample(c(2:ncol(df)), 1)] <- NA
  }

But I'd prefer to use the apply family.

Answer 1

Return x within your function:

> df <- apply (df, 2, function(x) {x[sample( c(1:n), floor(n/10))] <- NA; x} )
> tail(df)
      id   age  sex
[45,] "45" "41" NA 
[46,] "46" NA   "f"
[47,] "47" "38" "f"
[48,] "48" "32" "f"
[49,] "49" "53" NA 
[50,] "50" "74" "f"