[R] Getting started,

[jim holtman]

In answer to your first question, your statement should be:

date_vec = as.Date(data_download[1:50,1],"%m/%d/%Y")

Notice the capital "Y"; lower case says the year is only 2 digits, so
you were pickup up the '19' from the date.

Use 'plot(..., type='l')' for a line plot.

Your data is being read in as factors:

> str(data_download)
'data.frame':   9972 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ DATE: Factor w/ 9972 levels "01/01/1973","01/01/1974",..: 84 112
140 167 195 279 307 335 362 390 ...
 $ EDM1: Factor w/ 673 levels " 0.70"," 0.75",..: 599 597 593 594 591
586 583 571 574 586 ...

You need to convert EDM1 to numeric

data_download$EDM1 <- as.numeric(as.character(data_download$EDM1))

and then your data will plot as you like.

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 6:58 AM, gug <guygreen at netvigator.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> First of all, I'm new to R and I don't have anyone who already knows the
> language to ask for tips, so please excuse my ignorance.
>
> I'm trying to download data direct from the Federal Reserve statistics
> website and graph it, using the following:
>
>        #This downloads the data from the Fed website
> download.file("http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data/Business_day/H15_ED_M1.txt","Eurodollar_deposits1M.dat")
>
>        #This reads that data into a table
> data_download=read.table("Eurodollar_deposits1M.dat",skip=8,sep=",",head=T)
>
>        #This is attempting to get R to read the date column, which is in
> "mm/dd/yyyy" format
>        #I have restricted it to the first 50 data points (to keep it simple)
> date_vec = as.Date(data_download[1:50,1],"%m/%d/%y")
>
>        #This reads the values again for just the first 50 data points
> eurodollar_vec = data_download[1:50,2]
>
>        #This plots the date and data values.
> plot(date_vec,eurodollar_vec)
>
>
> A few issues with the output from this:
>
> 1) The date_vec data ends up looking like this "2019-01-04" - for some
> reason all year 2019, irrespective of the actual year (e.g. 1971, 1972).
> Any suggestions as to where I am going wrong?
>
> 2) The chart ends up as a scatter diagram, not surprisingly.  I initially
> tried to use the ts.plot() function but when I did, I found that it doesn't
> use the date column in the data as the x axis.  Is there a way of creating a
> time series that uses the date column, or alternatively, how would I turn
> these two columns (date & value) into a line graph?
>
> 3) The y-axis output should be from about 4.5 to about 8.5, but the y-axis
> shows as being about 430-670.  There also seems to be a line of points
> across the top which are all of the same value - as though anything above
> about 670 gets charted as 670.
>
>
> I'm sorry for this being a "what am I doing wrong" post, but I have looked
> through the manuals without success, and I am new enough to R that I don't
> have a feel for ways round these sorts of problems.  Any suggestions would
> be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Getting-started%2C-tp22719735p22719735.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>



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

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?