Another wishlist for R

1. Add "head" and "tail" to R base.  
   Patrick Burns has these: 
http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/public.html#genutil
   Very handy functions for checking data manipulation.

How about we just add these to a package available on CRAN?  How about we
just make a package of the Burns Statistics functions?  There are already
.Rd files...

4. Increased integration of text and graphics output (for 
PDF, in particular).
   Sweave is fantastic for quality reporting, but can be a lot of work
   when a quick analysis is all that is needed.
   Often I would like to do something like print a box plot 
and include an
   anova table, for example: 
     pdf("file")
     boxplot(y~x)
     frame()
     sink.to.pdf()
     frame()
     anova(lm(y~x))
     sink()
     dev.off()
   I know of no such (simple) tools.  Ben Bolker has a an idea here: 
     http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/help/02b/4179.html

In gregmisc I have a function textplot which does much of what you want, and
I've just added (in CRAN incoming now) a new function sinkplot() which
accomplishes exactly what you've asked for.  Here is the example:

   set.seed(12456)
   x <- factor(sample( LETTERS[1:5], 50, replace=T))
   y <- rnorm(50, mean=as.numeric(x), sd=1)

   par(mfrow=c(1,2))
   boxplot(y~x, col="darkgreen")

   sinkplot()
   anova(lm(y~x))
   sinkplot("plot",col="darkgreen")

The only thing that isn't quite right is the default R font is
proportionally spaced so the matrix columns don't line up right.  I'll need
change the default font.   [Are any of the Hershey fonts fixed width?]


-Greg


LEGAL NOTICE\ Unless expressly stated otherwise, this messag...{{dropped}}