[R] Question about computing offsets automatically

[Louisell, Paul T.]

Hi,

I'm using R version 1.8.0 on Windows NT. When fitting a glm with Poisson
random component and a log link, I frequently need to include an offset.
Typically I use xtabs or table to get the counts for the contingency table,
and then I use as.data.frame.table to create a data frame that I can use in
the glm function. I have not found an option that allows me to total the
offset variable to obtain offsets for cells in the contingency table. 

For example, suppose I have the following data frame named Data:

  F1 F2 Off
1  A  C   4
2  A  C   3
3  A  C   2
4  B  C   3
5  A  D   2
6  A  D   4
7  B  D   1

xtabs(~F1+F2, data=Data) produces the contingency table:

   F2
F1  C D
  A 3 2
  B 1 1

And as.data.frame.table(xtabs(~F1+F2, data=Data)) changes the contingency
table to a data frame suitable for use in the glm function:

  F1 F2 Freq
1  A  C    3
2  B  C    1
3  A  D    2
4  B  D    1

What I'm looking for is some option that would add a 4th column to the
output of as.data.frame.table which contains the offsets for each cell in
the contingency table:

  F1 F2 Freq  Off
1  A  C    3    9
2  B  C    1    3
3  A  D    2    6
4  B  D    1    1

Does such an option exist somewhere in R (I wasn't able to find it in the
documentation for the table, xtabs, as.data.frame.table, or glm functions)?
I can obtain the Off column easily enough in a simple loop, but I thought
there might be an option for this somewhere.
	

Paul Louisell
Statistician
(860) 565-5417
louisept at pweh.com