[R] Dividing by 0

[John Maindonald]

I suspect you should be smoothing the series in a manner that
replaces zeros by some usually small larger number before
you start.  Without more details on what you are trying to do, it
is impossible to know what is sensible.  You are proposing to
leave all smoothing ("rolling"?) till later; why not do some
smoothing at the start?

John Maindonald             email: john.maindonald at anu.edu.au
phone : +61 2 (6125)3473    fax  : +61 2(6125)5549
Centre for Mathematics & Its Applications, Room 1194,
John Dedman Mathematical Sciences Building (Building 27)
Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200.


On 26 Jul 2008, at 8:00 PM, r-help-request at r-project.org wrote:

> From: nmarti <nate318i at yahoo.com>
> Date: 26 July 2008 1:42:09 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Dividing by 0
>
>
> I'm well aware these are not errors, I guess I miss-wrote.
> I understand your concern.  Thanks for passionately looking out for  
> my well
> being, you saved my life.
>
> My variable has about 10,000 elements and sometime for the first 100  
> to 500
> elements there is lots of 0's, so I end up with lots of NA/NaN/Inf's.
> However, when I try to use "Rolling" calculations I recieve error  
> messages
> because the "Rolling" functions reject the NA/NaN/Inf's.  So, I need  
> 0's in
> place of the NA/NaN/Inf's so I can run the "Rolling" calculations.   
> I can't
> just delete these observations, because it messes up lots of other  
> other
> things within these dataframes.
>
> I'm well aware these "Rolling" calculations will be wrong in the  
> beginning
> of the dataframe, so I just throw these out.  The rolling window is  
> only
> about 50 odservations, so out of 10,000, I still end up with ample  
> correct
> data and calculations.
>
> So is this still idiotic?
> Thanks again for your concern.  Now that you understand my situation a
> little better, you might be less distracted today and be able to sleep
> better tonight.