Claddis (version 0.7.0)

find_time_bin_midpoints: Find time bin midpoints

Description

Find the midpoint values for each bin from a timeBins object

Usage

find_time_bin_midpoints(time_bins)

Value

A vector of time bin midpoint values.

Arguments

time_bins

A timeBins object.

Author

Graeme T. Lloyd

Details

Frequently the midpoints of a series of time bins (defined by a beginning and ending) will be required, for example, when plotting binned data as a time series. Although the calculation involved is trivial (i.e., start date + end date / 2) this is a sufficiently common operation it is made into a formal function here.

Note that this function is designed to work specifically with objects of class "timeBins" - a format specific to Claddis that looks something like this:

                  fad  lad
    Cenomanian    99.6 93.5
    Turonian      93.5 89.3
    Coniacian     89.3 85.8
    Santonian     85.8 83.5
    Campanian     83.5 70.6
    Maastrichtian 70.6 65.5

I.e., a matrix with two columns (fad = first appearance date and lad = last appearance date) with rows corresponding to named time bins and indiviual values ages in millions of years ago (Ma). The object should also have class timeBins (see example below for hot to generate such an object). Note also that the convention here is to have time bins be ordered from oldest to youngest.

Examples

# Create a time bins object:
time_bins <- matrix(
  data = c(99.6, 93.5, 93.5, 89.3, 89.3, 85.8, 85.8, 83.5, 83.5, 70.6, 70.6, 65.5),
  ncol = 2,
  byrow = TRUE,
  dimnames = list(
    c("Cenomanian", "Turonian", "Coniacian", "Santonian", "Campanian", "Maastrichtian"),
    c("fad", "lad")
  )
)

# Set class as timeBins:
class(time_bins) <- "timeBins"

# Return midpoints for each time bin in sequence:
find_time_bin_midpoints(time_bins = time_bins)