Comments in line
On 13/03/2021 09:50, SOEIRO Thomas wrote:> Dear list,
>
> I have some questions/suggestions about reshape.
>
> 1) I think a good amount of the popularity of base::reshape alternative is
due to the complexity of reshape documentation. It is quite hard (at least it is
for me) to figure out what argument is needed for respectively "long to
wide" and "wide to long", because reshapeWide and reshapeLong are
documented together.
> - Do you agree with this?
> - Would you consider a proposal to modify the documentation?
> - If yes, what approach do you suggest? e.g. split in two pages?
The current documentation is much clearer than it was when I first
started using R but we should always strive for more.
I would suggest leaving the documentation in one place but it might be
helpful to add which direction is relevant for each parameter by placing
(to wide) or (to long) as appropriate. I think having completely
separate lists is not needed
>
> 2) I do not think the documentation indicates that we can use varying
argument to rename variables in reshapeWide.
> - Is this worth documenting?
> - Is the construct list(c()) really needed?
Yes, because you may have more than one set of variables which need to
correspond to a single variable in long format. So in your example if
you also had 11 variables for the temperature as well as the
concentration each would need specifying as a separate vector in the list.
Michael
>
> reshape(Indometh,
> v.names = "conc",
> idvar = "Subject",
> timevar = "time",
> direction = "wide",
> varying = list(c("conc_0.25hr",
> "conc_0.5hr",
> "conc.0.75hr",
> "conc_1hr",
> "conc_1.25hr",
> "conc_2hr",
> "conc_3hr",
> "conc_4hr",
> "conc_5hr",
> "conc_6hr",
> "conc_8hr")))
>
> Thanks,
>
> Thomas
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>
--
Michael
http://www.dewey.myzen.co.uk/home.html