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Precision of summary() when summarizing variables in a data frame

4 messages · jim holtman, Erik Iverson, Daniel Malter

Daniel Malter
# 
Hi, 

I summary() a variable with 409908 numeric observations. The variable is
part of a data.frame. The problem is that the min and max returned by
summary() do not equal the ones returned by min() and max(). Does anybody
know why that is?
[1] 15452
[1] 316148
Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
  15450   21670   40980   55500   63880  316100 


sessionInfo()
R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31) 
x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0 

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] sqldf_0.3-5           chron_2.3-39          gsubfn_0.5-5         
[4] proto_0.3-8           RSQLite.extfuns_0.0.1 RSQLite_0.9-4        
[7] DBI_0.2-5     

Thanks much,
Daniel  

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jim holtman
# 
They are probably the same.  It isjust that summary is printing out 4
significant digits.  Try:

options(digits = 20)
On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Daniel Malter <daniel at umd.edu> wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Erik Iverson
    

    

      
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jim holtman wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
FYI, the default summary method also has its own digits argument.