[R] Summary shows wrong maximum

[Mike Prager]

I don't know about candidacy, and I'm not going to argue about
"correctness," but it seems to me that the only valid reasons to
limit precision of printing in a statistics program are (1) to
save space and (2) to allow for machine limitations. This is
neither. To chop off information and replace it with zeroes is
just plain nasty.


Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:

>  
> Folks:
> 
> Is 
> 
> "So this is at best a matter of opinion, 
> and credentials do matter for opinions."
> 
> -- Brian Ripley
> 
> an R fortunes candidate?
> 
> -- Bert Gunter
> 
> 
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Oliver Czoske wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> >> Sebastian Spaeth wrote:
> >>> Hi all,
> >>> I have a list with a numerical column "cum_hardreuses". By coincidence I
> >>> discovered this:
> >>>
> >>>> max(libs[,"cum_hardreuses"])
> >>> [1] 1793
> >>>
> >>>> summary(libs[,"cum_hardreuses"])
> >>>     Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
> >>>        1       2       4      36      14    1790
> >>>
> >>> (note the max value of 1790) Ouch this is bad! Anything I can do to
> remedy
> >>> this? Known bug?
> >>
> >> No, it's a feature! See ?summary: printing is done up to 3 significant
> >> digits by default.
> >
> > Unfortunately, '1790' is printed with *four* significant digits, not
> > three. The correct representation with three significant digits would have
> > to employ scientific notation, 1.79e3.
> >
> >

-- 
Mike Prager, NOAA, Beaufort, NC
* Opinions expressed are personal and not represented otherwise.
* Any use of tradenames does not constitute a NOAA endorsement.