[Rd] inaccuracy in qbinom with partial argument matching

Petr Savicky savicky at cs.cas.cz
Fri Jun 29 11:04:06 CEST 2007


> > ## partial argument matching:
> > qbinom(p0     , s = 3,    p    = 0.25)  ## 1 ???
> > qbinom(p0-0.05, s = 3,    p    = 0.25)  ## 1 ???
> > qbinom(p0-0.06, s = 3,    p    = 0.25)  ## 0 o.K.
> >
> > Unfortunately I have no I idea how to fix this.
> 
> You use a call that specifies your intentions accurately.  This is not 
> 'partial argument matching': 'p' is an exact match to the first argument 
> of
> 
> > args(qbinom)
> function (p, size, prob, lower.tail = TRUE, log.p = FALSE)
> 
> and that is how argument matching in R is documented to work.
> 
> The 'inaccuracy' is in the diagnosis: please see the FAQ.
 
Let me add an explanation, why
  qbinom(p0     , s = 3,    p    = 0.25)
does not produce an error message about missing "prob" argument:
Since "size" and "p" arguments are given, p0 is used for
the third argument and not for the first.

Although the behavior is logical, it may not be immediately clear.
I do not see this case explicitly in FAQ or R-intro.pdf 10.3.

Petr.



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