[R] Usefulness of "scale" function

[Gundala Viswanath]

Hi all,

I found this snippet in a gene expression
clustering code.

__BEGIN__
temp <- readLines("GSE1110_series_matrix.txt");
cat(temp[-grep("^!|^\"$", temp)], file="GSE1110clean.txt", sep="\n");
mydata <- read.delim("GSE1110clean.txt", header=T, sep="\t")

mydatascale <- t(scale(t(mydata)))


I am wondering, in general:

1. What is the purpose of 'scale' function?
2. When one should use it?


-- 
Gundala Viswanath