[Rd] quantile() names

[Abby Spurdle]

Sorry, I need to change my last post.

I looked at this a bit more, and realized that increasing the (max)
number of (name) digits is only relevant in some cases.
For people computing quartiles and deciles, this shouldn't make any difference.
Therefore, should still be convenient for the purposes of summary-style output.


On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 11:48 AM Abby Spurdle <spurdle.a using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> CITED TEXT CONTAINS EXCERPTS ONLY
>
> > and now we read more replies on this topic without anyone looking at
> > the pure R source code which is pretty simple and easy.
> > Instead, people do experiments and take time to muse about their findings..
> > Honestly, I'm disappointed: I've always thought that if you
> > *write* on R-devel, you should be able to figure out a few
> > things yourself before that..
>
> That's a bit unfair.
> Some of us have written packages, containing functions for computing
> quantile names:
>
>      probhat::ntile.names (,100)
>
>
> > 1) provide an optional argument   'digits = 7'
> >    back compatible w/ default getOption("digits")
>
> I'm not sure I've got this right.
> Are you suggesting that by default, names should have 7 digits?
>
>
> > so I'm guessing it may make more people unhappy than other
> > people happy if we change this now, after close to 23 years  .. ??
>
> I would probably be in the less enthusiastic group.
> I take the view that quantile naming is mainly a convenience, for
> summary-style output.
>
> And on that basis, I would say the current behaviour is about right.
> Anyone looking for high precision, should probably compute their own
> quantile names.
>
>
> Also, expanding on an earlier point.
> The value was 975.025, so a label of "97.5%" could still cause problems.
> Increasing the precision doesn't necessarily fix this sort of problem.
> But rather, increases the complexity of the output, beyond what
> "97.5%" of users would ever want...
>
>
> B.