plotrix (version 2.6-1)

hierobrk: Perform a nested breakdown of numeric values.

Description

Breaks down a numeric element of a data frame by one or more categorical elements.

Usage

hierobrk(formula,data,maxlevels=10,num.desc=c("mean","std.error","valid.n"))

Arguments

formula

A formula with a numeric element of a data frame on the left and one or more categorical elements on the right.

data

A data frame containing the elements in formula.

maxlevels

The maximum number of levels in any categorical element. Mainly to prevent the mess caused by breaking down by a huge number of categories.

num.desc

The names of the summary functions to use.

Value

• A list containing the overall summary results and a matrix (if only one categorical element is on the right) with the summary results as rows and the categories as columns. With increasing numbers of categories, this will generate deeper levels of lists. This function is similar to brkdn in the prettyR package, but is structured to be used with the hierobarp function.

Details

hierobrk performs the breakdown of a numeric element of a data frame by one or more categorical elements. For each category and optionally subcategories, the variable on the left of the formula is summarized as specified by the functions named in num.desc.

The user should take care when specifying different summary functions. hierobarp expects a measure of central tendency as the first function and a measure of dispersion as the second, if "error bars" are to be displayed.

Examples

test.df<-data.frame(Age=rnorm(100,25,10),
  Sex=sample(c("M","F"),100,TRUE),
  Marital=sample(c("M","X","S","W"),100,TRUE),
  Employ=sample(c("FT","PT","NO"),100,TRUE))
 hierobrk(formula=Age~Sex+Marital+Employ,data=test.df)