[R] Problem in 'Apply' function: does anybody have othersolution

[Liaw, Andy]

Could it be that the "problematic" data came from csv files with quotes?
What does str() on those data say?  Recall that apply() will coerce the
object to a matrix (if it's not), which means everything needs to be the
same type, so if even just one column is read into R as non-numeric, the
entire result will be "wrong". 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of suparna mitra
> Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 7:41 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Problem in 'Apply' function: does anybody 
> have othersolution
> 
> Dear All,
>  Just to add some more lines in my previous query I am 
> writing this. I was
> checking with several data. The cases where the apply 
> function is working,
> the part of result looks like :
> 
> > apply(Species.all[1:10,],1,max,na.rm=TRUE)
>     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9    10
> 22392    45    45    45    14    25    25   753   101    10
> 
> and with the problematic data it looks like:
> 
> > apply(Species.all[1:10,],1,max,na.rm=TRUE)
>      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9     10
> "7286" "3258" "1024"  " 45"  " 45"  " 45"   " 9"  " 25"  " 25" " 753"
> 
> But my all the datasets are in CSV format. I am reading those 
> datasets as
> read.csv or read.delim
> Can anybody please suggest me how to this problem?
> Thanks and regards,
> Suparna.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 1:14 PM, suparna mitra 
> <suparna.mitra at googlemail.com
> > wrote:
> 
> > Dear All,
> >   I am having some problem in apply function.
> > I have some data like below. I want to get a range vector 
> (which is max-min
> > value for each row , ignoring NA values.)
> > > Species.all[1:10,]
> >        V2     V3     V4     V5    V6   V7    V8   V9
> > 1   57543  55938  47175  54922 36032 5785 29497 7286
> > 2   42364  40472  29887  40107 19723 2691 14445 3258
> > 3   19461  19646  18538  22392  6744  794  4919 1024
> > 4      45     41     28     34    33   NA    26   NA
> > 5      45     41     28     34    33   NA    26   NA
> > 6      45     41     28     34    33   NA    26   NA
> > 7      14      9     14     14     7   NA    10   NA
> > 8      20     25     10     15    21   NA    10   NA
> > 9      20     25     10     15    21   NA    10   NA
> > 10    578    566    478    753   361  150   262  170
> > > dim(Species.all)
> > [1] 1862    8
> >
> > I used apply function like below. I used this same function 
> for some other
> > data, there it worked. But here its not working (giving 
> error message).
> >
> > > Range.j=apply(Species.all,1,max,na.rm =
> > TRUE)-apply(Species.all,1,min,na.rm = TRUE)
> > Error in apply(Species.all, 1, max, na.rm = TRUE) - 
> apply(Species.all,  :
> >     non-numeric argument to binary operator
> >
> > When i tried to check, you can see from the steps it is 
> giving totally
> > wrong results.
> >
> > > apply(Species.all[1:10,],1,max)
> >      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8     
>  9     10
> > "7286" "3258" "1024"     NA     NA     NA     NA     NA     
> NA " 753"
> > > apply(Species.all[1:10,],1,min)
> >        1        2        3        4        5        6        7
> > 8        9       10
> > " 47175" " 29887" " 18538"       NA       NA       NA       NA
> > NA       NA  "  262"
> >
> >
> > Main problem is, this code is working for some cases, but 
> not for all. Does
> > any body have an idea, why it is so? Or can anyone show me 
> some other way to
> > do the same.
> > Thanks in advance,
> > With best regard,
> > Suparna
> >
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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