[R] Using nrow with summaryBy

[Ivan Calandra]

Hi David,

I have probably 2 stupid questions regarding what you said but it might 
be important to understand:

- why nrow() "would not make sens for a subsetted vector"?
On the help page of nrow(), it's written that we can apply it on a 
vector, array or dataframe (basically everything...?). So what's the 
difference between a "normal" vector (for which it would make sense and 
work) and a subsetted vector?

- why assuming "that length() applied to dataframes would tell me how 
many rows it had" would be a mistake? I mean in this case, length() is 
calculated for each numerical variable (which are vectors, aren't they?).

I think these questions concern the way R handle the data and that's why 
I think it might be important for me to understand these issues.

Thanks for your input.
Regards,
Ivan

Le 3/17/2010 16:39, David Winsemius a écrit :
>
> On Mar 17, 2010, at 11:23 AM, Tony Laidig wrote:
>
>> Hello Everyone-
>> I'm calculating summary statistics on a dataset (~4000 records,
>> observations are not uniformly distributed) using summaryBy and trying
>> to add a column with the number of observations to the output as well.
>> What occurs to me is to use nrow(), but this doesn't appear to be 
>> working
>>
>> I'm able to replicate the same results with an example from the
>> summaryBy docs:
>>
>> data(dietox)
>> dietox12<- subset(dietox,Time==12)
>> library(doBy)
>> #this one works
>> summaryBy(Weight+Feed~Evit+Cu,data=dietox12,FUN=c(mean,var,length))
>> #adding nrow doesn't give the number of rows
>> summaryBy(Weight+Feed~Evit+Cu,data=dietox12,FUN=c(mean,var,length,nrow))
>>
>
> I'm a bit puzzled. One of my many newbie mistakes was to assume that 
> length() applied to dataframes would tell me how many rows it had. It 
> appears that the authors of summaryBy have figured out how to get 
> length() to tell you the number of observations, presumably on a 
> subsetted vector where length would make sense.  So ...  it's not 
> clear why you also want nrow (which would not make sense for a 
> subsetted vector).
>
>
>>
>> There must be a way to do this, but I can't figure it out. I suspect
>> there is another function that would be compatible with summaryBy.
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>> -Tony
>
>
> David Winsemius, MD
> West Hartford, CT
>
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-- 
Ivan CALANDRA
PhD Student
University of Hamburg
Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum
Abt. Säugetiere
Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3
D-20146 Hamburg, GERMANY
+49(0)40 42838 6231
ivan.calandra at uni-hamburg.de

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