prettyR (version 2.2-3)

describe.numeric: Description of numeric variables

Description

Describes a numeric variable.

Usage

describe.numeric(x,varname="",
  num.desc=c("mean","median","var","sd","valid.n"))

Arguments

x

A numeric vector.

varname

The variable name to display.

num.desc

The names of the functions to apply to the vector.

Value

The vector of values returned from the functions in num.desc.

Details

describe.numeric displays the name of the vector and the results of the functions whose names are passed in num.desc. Note that any functions that are called by describe.numeric must have an na.rm argument, even if it is a dummy.

See Also

describe, valid.n

Examples

# NOT RUN {
 x<-rnorm(100)
 # include a function that calculates the "smoothness" of a vector
 # of numbers by calculating the mean of the absolute difference
 # between each successive value - all values equal would be 0
 smoothness<-function(x,na.rm=TRUE) {
  if(na.rm) x<-x[!is.na(x)]
  xspan<-diff(range(x))
  return(mean(abs(diff(x))/xspan,na.rm=TRUE))
 }
 describe(x,num.desc=c("mean","median","smoothness"),xname="x")
 # now sort the values to make the vector "smoother"
 describe(sort(x),num.desc=c("mean","median","smoothness"),xname="x")
# }