[R] aggregate example : where is the state.region variable?

John Kane jrkrideau at yahoo.ca
Tue Aug 22 00:59:27 CEST 2006


--- Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Its not part of state.x77.  Its a completely
> separate variable.
> Try ls("package:datasets") and notice its in the
> list
> or try ?state.region and note that its a variable in
> datasets.

Thanks. I was wondering if it was going something like
that.

However, it is a bloody stupid example, at least to a
newbie.  A call to another data.set in what is
supposed to be a simple example is very confusing.

When someone is apparently illustrating a function
with a simple one line command I don't expect them to
call another data set, apparently create a new
variable (Region), and use that new variable as the
grouping variable without a word of explanation of
what the example is doing. 

If I sound a bit annoyed it is because I am. It might
be nice to have an example illlustate the funtion,not
do a couple of other undocumented things as well. 
> 
> 
> On 8/21/06, John Kane <jrkrideau at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> > I was looking ?aggregate and ran the first example
> >
> >  aggregate(state.x77, list(Region = state.region),
> > mean)
> >
> > The variables in state.x77 appear to be :
> > > state.x77
> > Population Income Illiteracy Life Exp Murder HS
> Grad
> > Frost   Area
> >
> > Where is the "state.region" variable coming from?
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
> reproducible code.
> >
>



More information about the R-help mailing list