Add an Index (numeric ID) Column to a Data Frame in R

Suppose you have the following data frame:

data <- data.frame(team = c('Spurs', 'Lakers', 'Pistons', 'Mavs'),
                   avg_points = c(102, 104, 96, 97))
data

#     team avg_points
#1   Spurs        102
#2  Lakers        104
#3 Pistons         96
#4    Mavs         97

In order to add an index column to give each row in this data frame a unique numeric ID, you can use the following code:

#add index column to data frame
data$index <- 1:nrow(data)
data

#     team avg_points index
#1   Spurs        102     1
#2  Lakers        104     2
#3 Pistons         96     3
#4    Mavs         97     4

Another way to add a unique ID to each row in the data frame is by using the tibble::rowid_to_column function from the tidyverse package:

#load tidyverse package
library(tidyverse)

#create data frame
data <- data.frame(team = c('Spurs', 'Lakers', 'Pistons', 'Mavs'),
                   avg_points = c(102, 104, 96, 97))

#add index column to data frame
data <- tibble::rowid_to_column(data, "index")
data

#  index team avg_points
#1  1   Spurs        102
#2  2  Lakers        104
#3  3 Pistons         96
#4  4    Mavs         97

Notice that both techniques produce the same result: a new column that gives each row in the data frame a unique ID.