[R] by() and CrossTable()

[Gabor Grothendieck]

At least for this case I think you could get the effect without modifyiing
CrossTable like this:

as.CrossTable <- function(x) structure(x, class = c("CrossTable", class(x)))
print.CrossTable <- function(x) for(L in x) cat(L, "\n")

by(warpbreaks, warpbreaks$tension, function(x)
	as.CrossTable(capture.output(CrossTable(x$wool, x$breaks > 30,
	format="SPSS", fisher=TRUE))))


On 4/25/06, Marc Schwartz (via MN) <mschwartz at mn.rr.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 11:07 -0400, Chuck Cleland wrote:
> >    I am attempting to produce crosstabulations between two variables for
> > subgroups defined by a third factor variable.  I'm using by() and
> > CrossTable() in package gmodels.  I get the printing of the tables first
> > and then a printing of each level of the INDICES.  For example:
> >
> > library(gmodels)
> >
> > by(warpbreaks, warpbreaks$tension, function(x){CrossTable(x$wool,
> > x$breaks > 30, format="SPSS", fisher=TRUE)})
> >
> >    Is there a way to change this so that the CrossTable() output is
> > labeled by the levels of the INDICES variable?  I think this has to do
> > with how CrossTable returns output, because the following does what I want:
> >
> > by(warpbreaks, warpbreaks$tension, function(x){summary(lm(breaks ~ wool,
> > data = x))})
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > Chuck
>
> Chuck,
>
> Thanks for your e-mail.
>
> Without digging deeper, I suspect that the problem here is that
> CrossTable() has embedded formatted output within the body of the
> function using cat(), as opposed to a two step process of creating a
> results object, which then has a print method associated with it. This
> would be the case in the lm() example that you have as well as many
> other functions in R.
>
> I had not anticipated this particular use of CrossTable(), since it was
> really focused on creating nicely formatted 2d tables using fixed width
> fonts.
>
> That being said, I have had recent requests to enhance CrossTable()'s
> functionality to:
>
> 1. Be able to assign the results of the internal processing to an object
> and be able to assign that object without any other output. For example:
>
>  Results <- CrossTable(...)
>
> yielding no further output in the console.
>
>
> 2. Facilitate LaTeX markup of the CrossTable() formatted output for
> inclusion in LaTeX documents.
>
>
> Both of the above would require me to fundamentally alter CrossTable()
> to create a "CrossTable" class object, as opposed to the current
> embedded output. I would then create a print.CrossTable() method
> yielding the current output, as well as one to create LaTeX markup for
> that application. The LaTeX output would likely need to support the
> regular 'table' style as well as 'ctable' and 'longtable' styles, the
> latter given the potential for long multi-page output.
>
> These changes should then support the type of use that you are
> attempting here.
>
> These are on my TODO list for CrossTable() (along with the inclusion of
> the measures of association recently discussed) and now that the dust
> has settled from some recent abstract submission deadlines I can get
> back to some of these things. I don't have a timeline yet, but will
> forge ahead with these enhancements.
>
> One possible suggestion for you as an interim, at least in terms of some
> nicely formatted n-way tables is the ctab() function in the 'catspec'
> package by John Hendrickx.
>
> A possible example call would be:
>
> ctab(warpbreaks$tension, warpbreaks$wool, warpbreaks$breaks > 30,
>     type = c("n", "row", "column", "total"), addmargins = TRUE)
>
>
> Unlike CrossTable() which is strictly 2d (though that may change in the
> future), ctab() directly supports the creation of n-way tables, with
> counts and percentages/proportions interleaved in the output. There are
> no statistical tests applied and these would need to be done separately
> using by().
>
>
> Chuck, feel free to contact me offlist as other related issues may arise
> or as you have other comments on this.
>
> Again, thanks for the e-mail.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
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