[R] [EXT] result of mean(v1, v2, v3) of three real number not the same as sum(v1, v2, v3)/3

[David K Stevens]

John - for both mean and sum, the numbers to be operated on need to be 
in a vector. This can be done with the 'c(...)' function, which takes 
the arguments (your three numbers) and concatenates them into a vector.

 > mean(c(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3))
[1] 0.01984417

 > sum(c(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3))/3
[1] 0.01984417

What you have done is provide the mean (and sum) functions with three 
arguments. If you look at the documentation for 'mean', you have mlagFZ1 
as the 'x' argument, mlagFZ2 as the 'trim' argument, and mlagFZ3 as the 
'na.rm' argument, and makes no sense. With slightly different details, 
the same applies to the 'sum' function.

mean {base}    R Documentation
Arithmetic Mean
Description
Generic function for the (trimmed) arithmetic mean.

Usage
mean(x, ...)

## Default S3 method:
mean(x, trim = 0, na.rm = FALSE, ...)
Arguments
x
An R object. Currently there are methods for numeric/logical vectors and 
date, date-time and time interval objects. Complex vectors are allowed 
for trim = 0, only.

trim
the fraction (0 to 0.5) of observations to be trimmed from each end of x 
before the mean is computed. Values of trim outside that range are taken 
as the nearest endpoint.

na.rm
a logical value indicating whether NA values should be stripped before 
the computation proceeds.
On 5/12/2022 1:31 PM, Sorkin, John wrote:
> I have a very strange problem. I am getting different results from
> mean(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)
> vs.
>   sum(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)/3
>
>
>> mean(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)
> [1] -0.3326792
>
>>   sum(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)/3
> [1] -0.201942
>
> R code:
> print(mlagFZ1)
> print(mlagFZ2)
> print(mlagFZ3)
>   sum(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)/3
> mean(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)
>
> output;
>> print(mlagFZ1)
> [1] -0.3326792
>> print(mlagFZ2)
> [1] -0.1890601
>> print(mlagFZ3)
> [1] -0.0840866
>>   sum(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)/3
> [1] -0.201942
>> mean(mlagFZ1,mlagFZ2,mlagFZ3)
> [1] -0.3326792
>
> Can someone tell me what I did wrong?
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-- 
David K Stevens, PhD,PE
Professor
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Utah State University
Logan, UT 84322-8200
david.stevens using usu.edu
014357973229

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