[R] summary() vs mean()

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Marc R. Feldesman wrote:

> Forgive what may seem to be a trivial question/problem.
>
> Below is some simple R 1.2.1(Windows) code with output.
>
>  > summary(mammals, digits=10)
>         Name    Body.Weight      Brain.Weight
>   Red Fox :1   Min.   :   3.0   Min.   :  26.0
>   Pig     :1   1st Qu.:  35.5   1st Qu.: 138.5
>   Man     :1   Median : 100.0   Median : 406.0
>   Kangaroo:1   Mean   : 761.2   Mean   :1000.0
>   Jaguar  :1   3rd Qu.: 493.0   3rd Qu.: 667.5
>   Horse   :1   Max.   :6654.0   Max.   :5712.0
>   (Other) :9
>  > mean(mammals[,3])
> [1] 1000.467  # <---summary() reports it as 1000.0
>  > mean(mammals[,2])
> [1] 761.2 # <- summary() reports it as 761.2
>
> I'm puzzled why the Brain.Weight mean from summary() is different from
> mean(mammals[,3]), while the Body.Weight means are identical in the two
> functions.  This isn't limited to R; I've observed the same thing in S-Plus
> 2000 (and v.6 beta).

The results are to a certain number of significant figures, not decimal
places.

> I can get the "right" answer in S-Plus using the digits argument (setting
> digits=8), but this argument doesn't seem to have any effect in R 1.2.1.  I
> *did* use it the way it is illustrated in the help file as well (e.g.
>
> summary(mammals, digits=max(10, getOption("digits")))
> )
> with the same results as above.
>
> So, I guess I have two questions:
>
> 1)  Why does S (in both S-Plus and R 1.2.1) produce different values for
> the means in the second variable but not the first?

summary.default uses signif on the results, to by default 4 digits.

> 2)  Why does the digits argument seem not to have any effect in R 1.2.1's
> summary()?

Because R forgot to pass it down to summary.default.

> P.S.  I also pasted the example code from the summary help file into the R
> 1.2.1 window.  The digits argument doesn't change the results there either.

In R and summary.data.frame, digits is only used in formatting the result.

Replace

    z <- lapply(as.list(object), summary, maxsum = maxsum)

by

    z <- lapply(as.list(object), summary, maxsum = maxsum, digits = digits)

in R.

Brian


-- 
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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