Boxplot of multiple vectors with different lengths

Bert,

I may be mistaken, but I thought Ryan wrote "write code that automatically
imports data from?different files (with different lengths-just one
variable)", so, I was referring to doing something with the data before it
gets into R. I understand that one should not need to write out data and
then re-read it in some way. As I said, those more experienced with R will
probably offer better ideas.

Tom

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:

Sorry -- previous versiuon prematurely sent. Full version is:

?Yikes! ?You should never have to do this sort of thing (writing stuff
?out to files, etc.)

?What is wanted, I believe, is ?do.call as in

?do.call(boxplot, z)

?where z is list(a,b,c) ? as Sarah described.

?However, I think you might do even better in terms of controlling
?options, labels, etc. if you would get the data into standard flat
?file format (data frame) as

Result ? ? Source
?1 ? ? ? ? ? ?a
?3 ? ? ? ? ? b
2 ? ? ? ? ? ? b
?5 ? ? ? ? c
... etc.

(This is easy to do in R and via many packages.)
and then use he formula interface in the lattice ?bwplot ?function for th
eplot.

Cheers,
Bert

result

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Thomas Adams <thomas.adams at noaa.gov>
wrote:

Ryan,

I think you could do what you want by having the vector data written to
separate files; then create a file containing the individual file
names. In
R, read the file containing the list of file names and loop through
this
reading in the individual vector files. Maybe this is an inelegant,
brute
force approach, but it has worked for me with essentially the same
problem.

Tom

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Ryan Utz <utz.ryan at gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I'm attempting to write a code that automatically imports data from
different files (with different lengths-just one variable) and makes
tidy
box plots for comparison. I can successfully import the data and
create a
list of the vectors I want to compare. But I cannot, for the life of
me,
figure out how to generate box plots using the "list" option. Suppose
these
are my data:

a<-c(1,1,1,1,2,3,2,1,2,3)
b<-c(2,2,2,3,4,4,4,3,3)
c<-c(4,3,3,2,3,4,5,3,3,3,4,4,5,6,3,2)

And this is my list of the vectors I'm interested in:

?z<-list(c("a","b","c"))

Well, this successfully generates the kind of boxplot I want:

boxplot(a,b,c)

But this does not:

boxplot(z)

Because I'm trying to write an automatic plot-generator as the amount
of
data I'm working with will typically vary, I need to write this to
handle
any number of data vectors.

I've tried every imaginable means of tweaking the name of "z", with
zero
success. And I've scoured the help pages for about 45 minutes (just to
preempt any "read the help" responses). Please help!

Thanks,
Ryan

--

Ryan Utz, Ph.D.
Aquatic Ecologist/STREON Scientist
National Ecological Observatory Network

Home/Cell: (724) 272-7769
Work: (720) 836-2488

? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

--

Thomas E Adams
National Weather Service
Ohio River Forecast Center
1901 South State Route 134
Wilmington, OH 45177
EMAIL: ?thomas.adams at noaa.gov
VOICE: ?937-383-0528
FAX: ? ?937-383-0033

? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

--

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:

http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm

--

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:

http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm

--

Thomas E Adams
National Weather Service
Ohio River Forecast Center
1901 South State Route 134
Wilmington, OH 45177

EMAIL:	thomas.adams at noaa.gov

VOICE:	937-383-0528
FAX:	937-383-0033