Strange Results of summary()
Martin Maechler
Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>
Wed, 18 Mar 1998 18:59:46 +0100
Huber Palme writes
>> I run the following job. Please, compare the results of summary and
>> table concerning berufl. From similar SPSS/PSPP runs, the result of
>> table is correct.
>>
>> Did I misunderstand anything or is there a bug?
>>
>> What does the difference come from?
>> What does '(other)' mean?
>> What about the strange order of the levels?
>>
>> summary(....)
>>
>> ....
>> berufl
>> Bureaukraft :15
>> Guetererzeugung : 9
>> sonstige : 4
>> Handel : 3
>> wissensch.-technisch: 3
>> (Other) : 3
>> NA's :43
.....
>> > table(berufl)
>> wissensch.-technisch Leiter Oeff. Dienst/Wirtschaft
>> 3 0
>> Bureaukraft Handel
>> 15 3
>> Dienstleistungsgewerbe/Soldat Gaertner/Jaeger
>> 2 1
>> Guetererzeugung sonstige
>> 9 4
What's the problem?
'(Other)' gives all the levels having (in your case) 0,1,2 observations,
which sum to 3 observations.
"summary(.)" should give a summary (think of a factor with 500 levels....)
table() is more detailed (but doesn't report the NA's),
which is the only thing to critize here:
S-plus's table(..) has an extra argument "exclude" which
we should also have in R:
S> args(table)
function(..., exclude = c(NA, NaN))
S> table(c(NA,1:5))
1 2 3 4 5
1 1 1 1 1
> table(c(NA,1:5), exclude=NULL)
1 2 3 4 5 NA
1 1 1 1 1 1
Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch> <><
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum SOL G1; Sonneggstr.33
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology) 8092 Zurich SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408 fax: ...-1086
http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/~maechler/
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