s-news
[Top] [All Lists]

BY with stdev?

To: s-news@lists.biostat.wustl.edu
Subject: BY with stdev?
From: Eva Goldwater <goldwater@schoolph.umass.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 13:27:35 -0500 (EST)
Hello,

I tried to get standard deviations for subgroups of a numeric column,
defined by another column. I'm using the by function, but it doesn't work
with stdev.  It's fine with mean or summarize, but not stdev or stderr.
Here is my test.  (This is S-Plus 6.2 on Windows.)

x <- data.frame(cbind(x1=rep(1:2,5), x2=runif(10)))
by(x$x2,x$x1,mean)
by(x$x2,x$x1,stdev)
 Problem in as.double: Cannot coerce mode list
 to double: list(c(0.361767916940153, 0.132468292489....
Use traceback() to see the call stack

by(x$x2,x$x1,stderr)
Problem in FUN(...X.sub.i...., str..: Too many
 arguments(1) in call to "FUN"; last 1 not matched
Use traceback() to see the call stack

What's the problem?  Incidentally, ?stderr takes me to help for the file()
function...

Thanks for your insights.  Eva

Eva Goldwater                           email: goldwater@schoolph.umass.edu
Biostatistics Consulting                Phone: (413) 545-2949
418 Arnold House                        Fax:   (413) 545-1645
715 North Pleasant Street
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-9304

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>