Message-ID: <402BAC57.6060600@yale.edu>
Date: 2004-02-12T16:39:51Z
From: ivo welch
Subject: suggestion "suggestion" and dataframe operations
In-Reply-To: <200402121155.i1CBshwg005875@hypatia.math.ethz.ch>
hi chaps:
a simple suggestion: R tells me who the contributors() are, but this
should also tell me where I should mail suggestions to. Is it this
mailing list? a repository of suggestions? an individual?
this came up because i wanted to suggest two small enhancements:
the first is for the summary() method for plain data frames. it would
seem to me that the number of "NA"s should be printed as an integer, not
necessarily in scientific notation. I have also yet to determine when
summary() likes to give means and when it does not. (maybe it was an
older version that sometimes did not give means). summary does not seem
to have optional parameters to specify what statistics I would like.
this could be useful, too.
another small enhancement: there are four elementary data frame
operations that bedevil novices, so they really should have named
function wrappers:
delrow( dataframe d, index=45);
insrow( dataframe d, (row)vector v);
delcol( dataframe d, "name");
inscol( dataframe d, (col)vector v);
I looked at my R "bible" (venables&ripley), too, but here too it is not
as clear as it needs to be. yes, this may be programmable, but it ain't
as obvious as it should be for beginners.
regards,
/iaw