[R] Printing a summary

[Sarah Goslee]

Hi,

I find it better to return a named list so that users can do what they
want with the results rather than just looking at them, which is all
your approach allows. That's not incompatible with printing the
results to the screen as well:

 CoinTosses <- function(n, verbose=TRUE) {
   x <- sample(c(0,1), n, replace=TRUE)
   y <- x
   y[y==0] <- "T"
   y[y==1] <- "H"
   numHeads <- sum(x)
   numTails <- n-sum(x)
   p <- numHeads/n
   if(verbose) {
      cat(cat(y,sep=""),"\n")
      cat("Number of heads: ", numHeads, "\n")
      cat("Number of tails: ", numTails, "\n")
      cat("The proportion of heads is: ", p, "\n")
   }
   list(numHeads = numHeads, numTails = numTails, p = p)
}

Sarah

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 4:34 PM, darnold <dwarnold45 at suddenlink.net> wrote:
> All,
>
> Is this typical of how people will print a summary of results?
>
> CoinTosses <- function(n) {
>   x <- sample(c(0,1), n, replace=TRUE)
>   y <- x
>   y[y==0] <- "T"
>   y[y==1] <- "H"
>   numHeads <- sum(x)
>   numTails <- n-sum(x)
>   p <- numHeads/n
>   cat(cat(y,sep=""),"\n")
>   cat("Number of heads: ", numHeads, "\n")
>   cat("Number of tails: ", numTails, "\n")
>   cat("The proportion of heads is: ", p, "\n")
> }
>
> CoinTosses(40)

> Or is another technique preferred?
>
> Thanks.
>
> David
>
>

-- 
Sarah Goslee
http://www.functionaldiversity.org