[Rd] mean(trim=, c(NA,...), na.rm=FALSE) does not return NA
Prof Brian Ripley
ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Thu Mar 18 11:57:04 CET 2010
On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, William Dunlap wrote:
> Both of the following should return NA,
> but do not in "R version 2.11.0 Under
> development (unstable) (2010-03-07 r51225)"
> on 32-bit Windows:
Nor in any version of R in the last several years (e.g. 2.1.0)
> > mean(c(1,10,100,NA), trim=.1)
> Error in sort.int(x, partial = unique(c(lo, hi))) :
> index 4 outside bounds
> > mean(c(1,10,100,NA), trim=.26)
> [1] 55
>
> With na.rm=TRUE they give the correct results.
But the fix is easy and I've done so in R-devel, thank you.
> (mean() would be so much simpler if we didn't
> have to worry about the seldom-used trim=
> argument.)
Only a little. I think the drawback is more conceptual: a trimmed
mean needs order-able data whereas 'mean' in its usual sense does not.
> Bill Dunlap
> Spotfire, TIBCO Software
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
More information about the R-devel
mailing list