[R] using aggregate with survey-design and survey functions

[Thomas Lumley]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 TyagiAnupam at aol.com wrote:

> Hi R users,
>
> I am trying to use the aggregate function with a survey design object and
> survey functions, but get the following error. I think I am incorrectly using the
> syntax somehow, and it may not be possible to access variables directly by
> name in a survey-design object. Am I right? How do I fix this problem? I have
> used aggregate with "mean" and "weighted.mean", and that works fine. I am trying
> to find out where the difference is. What would be an efficient alternative
> to aggregate for a large dataset?
>
> > s <- aggregate(income,list(age,sex),function(x) (svymean(~x,design=d.na)))
> Error in aggregate(income, list(age, sex), function(x) (svymean(~x,  :
>     Object "income" not found

This isn't going to work.

svymean needs the survey metadata to get the right mean, and aggregate
doesn't give it enough information.  aggregate would need a separate
method for svydesign objects.


	-thomas