[R] understanding patterns in categorical vs. continuous data

Dylan Beaudette dylan.beaudette at gmail.com
Fri Jan 27 22:09:03 CET 2006


Thanks to all for the helpful suggestions, I was able to get good start from 
there.

Cheers,

Dylan

On Thursday 26 January 2006 12:03 pm, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> Would this do?
>
> boxplot(Sepal.Length ~ Species, iris, horizontal = TRUE)
> library(Hmisc)
> summary(Sepal.Length ~ Species, iris, fun = summary)
>
> On 1/26/06, Dylan Beaudette <dylan.beaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I have a set of bivariate data: one variable (vegetation type) which is
> > categorical, and one (computed annual insolation) which is continuous.
> > Plotting veg_type ~ insolation produces a nice overview of the patterns
> > that I can see in the source data. However, due to the large number of
> > samples (1,000), and the apparent "spread" in the distribution of a
> > single vegetation type over a range of insolation values- I having a hard
> > time quantitatively describing the relationship between the two
> > variables.
> >
> > Here is a link to a sample graph:
> > http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/162
> >
> > Since the data along each vegetation type "line" is not a distribution in
> > the traditional sense, I am having problems applying descriptive
> > statistical methods. Conceptually, I would like to some how describe the
> > variation with insolation, along each vegetation type "line".
> >
> > Any guidance, or suggested reading material would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Dylan Beaudette
> > Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
> > University of California at Davis
> > 530.754.7341
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > 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

-- 
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341




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