[R] Creating Crosstabs using a sparse table

[David Winsemius]

On May 4, 2010, at 7:57 PM, merrittr wrote:

>
> Hi all
>
> I am trying to read in a table from a survey
> and get the error below
>
>
> gr12 <- read.table("gr12.csv", header=TRUE)
> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines,  
> na.strings,
> :
>  line 1 did not have 249 elements

You need to split this problem in sections, the first of which is  
getting your data into R. A very useful function to look at files is  
count.fields(). See what it produces with your file and also read:

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-data.html

... If you have missing data elements at the ends of input lines then  
perhaps fill=TRUE will be helpful.

>
> how would I go about reading in a table of this data, I am trying to
> generate a series of crostabs after I get it in
> ie Gender vs q1 q2 q3 q4...
>   Religion vs q1 q2 q3...

Solve the input problem first then table() or xtabs() as approapriate.

>
>
> any help would be appreciated
>
> -- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT