From Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>  Wed Mar 18 17:59:46 1998
From: Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch> (Martin Maechler)
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 18:59:46 +0100
Subject: Strange Results of summary()
In-Reply-To: <199803181605.RAA14113@wrin27.urz.uni-wuppertal.de>
 (palme@uni-wuppertal.de)
Message-ID: <199803181759.SAA06562@sophie.ethz.ch>


Huber Palme writes
>> I run the following job. Please, compare the results of summary and
>> table concerning berufl. From similar SPSS/PSPP runs, the result of
>> table is correct. 
>> 
>> Did I misunderstand anything or is there a bug? 
>> 
>> What does the difference come from?
>> What does '(other)' mean?
>> What about the strange order of the levels?
>> 
>> summary(....)
>>                                                           
>> ....
>>                    berufl  
>>  Bureaukraft         :15  
>>  Guetererzeugung     : 9  
>>  sonstige            : 4  
>>  Handel              : 3  
>>  wissensch.-technisch: 3  
>>  (Other)             : 3  
>>  NA's                :43  

.....

>> > table(berufl)
>>           wissensch.-technisch Leiter Oeff. Dienst/Wirtschaft 
>>                              3                              0 
>>                    Bureaukraft                         Handel 
>>                             15                              3 
>>  Dienstleistungsgewerbe/Soldat                Gaertner/Jaeger 
>>                              2                              1 
>>                Guetererzeugung                       sonstige 
>>                              9                              4 

What's the problem? 
	'(Other)' gives all the levels having (in your case) 0,1,2 observations,
	which sum to 3 observations.
"summary(.)" should give a summary  (think of a factor with 500 levels....)

table() is more detailed (but doesn't report the NA's),
  which is the only thing to critize here:

  S-plus's  table(..) has an extra argument  "exclude" which
  we should also have in R:

  S> args(table) 
	  function(..., exclude = c(NA, NaN))

  S> table(c(NA,1:5))
   1 2 3 4 5 
   1 1 1 1 1
  > table(c(NA,1:5), exclude=NULL)
   1 2 3 4 5 NA 
   1 1 1 1 1  1

Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>			<><
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum SOL G1;	Sonneggstr.33
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology)	8092 Zurich	SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408		fax: ...-1086
http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/~maechler/

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Strange Results of summary()
Martin Maechler