?var points out that "var is another interface to cov", i.e. it
calculates (possibly part of) the "variance" matrix. In the simplest
special case y = x and you get the entire variance matrix, or just the
sample variance if x is a simple vector, as in your case.
BTW you little function is a bit more complicated than it need be, isn't
it?
would do the same job with many fewer parentheses....
Bill Venables
CSIRO Laboratories
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AUSTRALIA
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http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/
-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of Ista Zahn
Sent: Thursday, 25 October 2007 11:35 AM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] Novice programing question
Hi all,
I apologize for the ignorance implicit in this question, but I'm
having a hard time figuring out how R functions work. For example, if
I wanted to write a function to compute a variance, I would do
something like
>my.var <- function(x) (sum(((x-mean(x)))^2))/(length(((x-mean(x)))
^2)-1)
And this seems to work, e.g.,
> my.var(V1)
[1] 116.1
> var(V1)
[1] 116.1
But when I try to see what the built-in var function does I get
> var
function (x, y = NULL, na.rm = FALSE, use)
{
if (missing(use))
use <- if (na.rm)
"complete.obs"
else "all.obs"
na.method <- pmatch(use, c("all.obs", "complete.obs",
"pairwise.complete.obs"))
if (is.data.frame(x))
x <- as.matrix(x)
else stopifnot(is.atomic(x))
if (is.data.frame(y))
y <- as.matrix(y)
else stopifnot(is.atomic(y))
.Internal(cov(x, y, na.method, FALSE))
}
<environment: namespace:stats>
Being a novice, I can't understand what this means. I only have one
variable, yet the code seems to be based on the covariance between x
and y. What is y? Sorry for such a stupid question. I am just trying
to figure out how R does things, and I can't seem to get my head
around it. Thank you for your patience.
-Ista Zahn
http://izahn.homedns.org
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