[R] smooth.spline() unique 'x' values error

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 15/02/2012 15:00, Nicholas Reich wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I'm getting an unexpected result when running smooth.spline().  Here
> is a simple example that replicates the error I'm getting:
>
>> aa<- c(1, 2, 3, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 12, 13, 14) bb<-
>> 1:length(aa) plot(aa, bb) smooth.spline(aa, bb)
> Error in smooth.spline(aa, bb) : need at least four unique 'x'
> values
>
>
>
> As you can see from the example, my 'x' clearly has more than 4
> values.  The problem is the form of my 'x'.  When I dig around in the
> smooth.spline() code, it looks like it is relying on a call to IQR(x)
> which, with data such as the object aa above, returns 0 because more
> than half of the values are stacked on one value in the middle of the
> data.  The call to smooth.spline() works if I add some random noise
> to the Xs, but I'd like to be able to avoid that type of workaround.
> Any other suggestions?

Read the help page (as the posting guide asked of you) ...

      tol: A tolerance for same-ness of the ‘x’ values.  The values are
           binned into bin of size ‘tol’ and values which fall into the
           same bin are regarded as the same.

Works with tol = 0.1, for example.  IQR is only used in the default for 
that argument.


> Thanks, Nick



-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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