[R] spss, string factors, selecting

[jim holtman]

Can you provide a small subset of the data that shows the problem.  In
a sense, what you are doing with:

selectE<-Data[Fatmethod==" E",]

should pull your rows of interest.  What does 'str(Data)' show?  What
does 'str(selectE)' show?  If you can at least include 10-20 rows of
data that show what is happening, it would help.

Here is an example using the data you sent and it seems to work just fine:

> x
   V1 V2   V3 V4 V5
1 120  3 20.2  4  E
2 121  4 20.0  5  B
3 132  3 21.2  4
> str(x)
'data.frame':   3 obs. of  5 variables:
 $ V1: int  120 121 132
 $ V2: int  3 4 3
 $ V3: num  20.2 20 21.2
 $ V4: int  4 5 4
 $ V5: Factor w/ 3 levels ""," B"," E": 3 2 1
> x[x$V5 == " E",]
   V1 V2   V3 V4 V5
1 120  3 20.2  4  E


On Nov 26, 2007 8:31 PM, Katherine Jones <kajones at connect.carleton.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is probably a case where someone has to see what is happening on
> my computer and it is complicated by my data being from SPSS (not my
> choice). It is quite hard to give my data, because it is such a large
> dataset. I have analysed 9 other datasets that work fine, but this
> particular dataset was inputted wrong so requires merging of two
> datasets. This may be the problem.
>
> Example of data:-
> File 1.
> [1] Individual [2] Habitat type [3] Weight
> File 2.
> [1] Individual [2] Fat [3] Fat method.
>
> I merge the two files to create:-
> [1] Individual [2] Habitat type [3] Weight [4] Fat [5] Fat method
>
> My merging appears to work in the sense that I can plot Weight versus
> Fat and I get data, but if I ask to see the data file I see a sea of
> "NAs". So I'm not sure how there can be data there to plot, see
> levels for and create tables for but I can't see it as a dataframe. I
> do get the plot I want.
>
> Fat method contains either blank cells, " B" or " E".
>
> I wish to select all the rows in columns 1-4 which contain an " E" in
> Fat method.
>
> e.g.
> 120, 3, 20.2, 4, E
> 121, 4, 20.0, 5, B
> 132, 3, 21.2, 4,
>
> I want to select only the row containing " E", so I can plot Fat vs
> Habitat and Weight vs. Fat.
>
> I have been doing this by using
>
> selectE<-Data[Fatmethod==" E",].
>
> However, this does not work. It removes all of my data in the other
> columns to "NA" and I am left only with fatmethod and fat scores.
>
> It is odd it works with other datasets but not this one. Although
> with my other datasets when I ask to select " E", I can still see "
> B" using levels(Fat method) but there is no data there, so my plots
> are correct.
>
> Sorry this is long. I'm having difficulty explaining it.
>
> Katherine
>
>
>
> On 26-Nov-07, at 5:09 PM, jim holtman wrote:
>
> > That should give you back a subset of 'data' (with all its columns),
> > for those with " E" in 'column'.  Can you show an example of your data
> > and what the desired output would be.  The posting guide asks "provide
> > commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code" so we don't
> > have to speculate on what you want.
> >
> > On Nov 26, 2007 5:04 PM, Katherine Jones
> > <kajones at connect.carleton.ca> wrote:
> >> This sort of works. It does select the E data, but unfortunately
> >> it doesn't
> >> select the data from the other columns; I want to select data
> >> across about 5
> >> columns by the factor " E" in one of the columns. It should be
> >> easy, but for
> >> some reason it is not working. The spaces being added don't help.
> >>
> >> It seems to work on my non-merged data files, although the merged
> >> file
> >> contains all the data I need.
> >>
> >> Thanks for the subset command though. Hadn't thought of using that.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 26-Nov-07, at 4:46 PM, jim holtman wrote:
> >> ?subset
> >>
> >>
> >> subset(data, column == " E")
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Jim Holtman
> > Cincinnati, OH
> > +1 513 646 9390
> >
> > What is the problem you are trying to solve?
>
>



-- 
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

What is the problem you are trying to solve?