[R] histogram

David Scott d.scott at auckland.ac.nz
Thu Oct 8 22:55:41 CEST 2009


Henrique Dallazuanna wrote:
> Change the breaks argument:
> 
> t1 <- hist(1:5, 0:5)
> t1$counts
> 
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Khanh Nguyen <knguyen at cs.umb.edu> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have a question about hist()
>>
>> 1)
>>> t1 <- hist(c(1,2,3,4,5))
>>> t1
>> $breaks
>> [1] 1 2 3 4 5
>>
>> $counts
>> [1] 2 1 1 1
>>
>> why is there 2 counts for 1? And should the counts be '1 1 1 1 1' ?
>>
>> Is there any other function to count frequency of discrete data?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> -k
>>

Nobody has mentioned what I think is the important point here, that 
histogram is not intended for the purpose of dealing with discrete data. 
  To expect that it will give you the counts you want is just wrong. As 
others have pointed out if you make things more explicit and don't take 
the defaults it will do so.

Using hist to obtain counts like this is like using a hammer to drive in 
a screw.

David Scott

-- 
_________________________________________________________________
David Scott	Department of Statistics
		The University of Auckland, PB 92019
		Auckland 1142,    NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 9 923 5055, or +64 9 373 7599 ext 85055
Email:	d.scott at auckland.ac.nz,  Fax: +64 9 373 7018

Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics




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