[R] negatively skewed data; reflecting

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 8/23/2006 8:08 AM, z.dalton at lancaster.ac.uk wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This problem may be very easy, but I can't think of how to do it.  I have constructed histograms of various variables in my dataset.  Some of them are negatively skewed, and hence need data transformations applied.  I know that you first need to reflect the negatively skewed data and then apply another transformation such as log, square root etc to bring it towards normailty. How is it that I reflect data in R?  I'm sorry if this seems a very simple task, I think it involves going back to Maths GCSE and relearning reflection, rotation, translation etc!  I have searched the internet, but cannot come up with anything useful on how to reflect data.
> 
>> hist(Lsoc)  #how do I reflect Lsoc in R?

Reflected <- -Lsoc

will reflect about zero.

> I am grateful for any help regarding this matter, it is just a very small part of my analysis and doesn't seem worth agonising hours over.  I will probably kick myself when someone tells me the answer!

Please don't kick yourself :-)

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> Thank you very much,
> 
> Zoe
> 
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