R help - Dec 2010 - inconsistency with cor() - "x must be numeric"

Howdy,
   I have written a small function to generate a simple plot and my
colleague is having an error when attempting to run it.  Essentially I loop
through categories in a data frame and take the average value for each
category The categories are in $V1, subset first then mean taken and
concatenated to previous values using rbind(c("label",mean(data$V6)). 
The
result is a two-column matrix with labels in column one and values in column
two.  Within the function I calculate the correlation of column two and
another set of values that are part of the function.  On my computer (linux
box running R 2.8.1) the function runs correctly.  On my colleague's
computer (Windows box running R 2.12) the function throws an error at the
cor() function call saying that "x must be numeric."  We are running
on the
exact same data set and source'ing the same function definition.  Any help
would be appreciated.

- Fincher

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Please provide a reproducible example!

E.g., use ?dput to dump a minimal data.frame that
exhibits this issue on the newest version of R.

Justin Fincher wrote:
> Howdy,
>    I have written a small function to generate a simple plot and my
> colleague is having an error when attempting to run it.  Essentially I loop
> through categories in a data frame and take the average value for each
> category The categories are in $V1, subset first then mean taken and
> concatenated to previous values using
rbind(c("label",mean(data$V6)).  The
> result is a two-column matrix with labels in column one and values in
column
> two.  Within the function I calculate the correlation of column two and
> another set of values that are part of the function.  On my computer (linux
> box running R 2.8.1) the function runs correctly.  On my colleague's
> computer (Windows box running R 2.12) the function throws an error at the
> cor() function call saying that "x must be numeric."  We are
running on the
> exact same data set and source'ing the same function definition.  Any
help
> would be appreciated.
> 
> - Fincher
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Hi Fincher,

cor() only works on numeric arguments now (as of R 2.11 or 2.10 if
memory serves).  So, I would update your function to ensure that you
are only passing numeric data to cor() and the error should go away
(it will probably be easier on you if you can update your version of R
to the latest and greatest...quite a bit has changed since 2.8.1).  If
you post a reproducible example of your function, I'm sure we can help
update it.

Cheers,

Josh

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Justin Fincher <fincher at cs.fsu.edu>
wrote:
> Howdy,
> ? I have written a small function to generate a simple plot and my
> colleague is having an error when attempting to run it. ?Essentially I loop
> through categories in a data frame and take the average value for each
> category The categories are in $V1, subset first then mean taken and
> concatenated to previous values using
rbind(c("label",mean(data$V6)). ?The
> result is a two-column matrix with labels in column one and values in
column
> two. ?Within the function I calculate the correlation of column two and
> another set of values that are part of the function. ?On my computer (linux
> box running R 2.8.1) the function runs correctly. ?On my colleague's
> computer (Windows box running R 2.12) the function throws an error at the
> cor() function call saying that "x must be numeric." ?We are
running on the
> exact same data set and source'ing the same function definition. ?Any
help
> would be appreciated.
>
> - Fincher
>
> ? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>


-- 
Joshua Wiley
Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
http://www.joshuawiley.com/