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Justin Ashmall

2006-Jun-08 09:46 UTC

[R] Re-binning histogram data

Hi,

Short Version:
Is there a function to re-bin a histogram to new, broader bins?

Long version: I'm trying to create a histogram, however my input-data is 
itself in the form of a fine-grained histogram, i.e. numbers of counts 
in regular one-second bins. I want to produce a histogram of, say, 
10-minute bins (though possibly irregular bins also).

I suppose I could re-create a data set as expected by the hist() function 
(i.e. if time t=3600 has 6 counts, add six entries of 3600 to a list) 
however this seems neither elegant nor efficient (though I'd be pleased to 
be mistaken!). I could then re-create a histogram as normal.

I guessing there's a better solution however! Apologies if this is a basic 
question - I'm rather new to R and trying to get up to speed.

Regards,

Justin

Petr Pikal

2006-Jun-08 09:56 UTC

head link

[R] Re-binning histogram data

Hi

try truehist from MASS package and look for argument breaks or h.

HTH
Petr




On 8 Jun 2006 at 10:46, Justin Ashmall wrote:

Date sent:      	Thu, 8 Jun 2006 10:46:19 +0100 (BST)
From:           	Justin Ashmall <ja at space.mit.edu>
To:             	r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject:        	[R] Re-binning histogram data
> Hi,
> 
> Short Version:
> Is there a function to re-bin a histogram to new, broader bins?
> 
> Long version: I'm trying to create a histogram, however my input-data
> is itself in the form of a fine-grained histogram, i.e. numbers of
> counts in regular one-second bins. I want to produce a histogram of,
> say, 10-minute bins (though possibly irregular bins also).
> 
> I suppose I could re-create a data set as expected by the hist()
> function (i.e. if time t=3600 has 6 counts, add six entries of 3600 to
> a list) however this seems neither elegant nor efficient (though I'd
> be pleased to be mistaken!). I could then re-create a histogram as
> normal.
> 
> I guessing there's a better solution however! Apologies if this is a
> basic question - I'm rather new to R and trying to get up to speed.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Justin
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
Petr Pikal
petr.pikal at precheza.cz

Charles Annis, P.E.

2006-Jun-09 02:17 UTC

head link

[R] Re-binning histogram data

Concerning the several comments on your note relating to histograms, an
informative and entertaining illustration, using Java, of how your
subjective assessment of the data can change with different histograms
constructed from the same data, is provided by R. Webster West, recently
with the Department of Statistics at the University of South Carolina, but
as of May 2006 with the Department of Statistics at Texas A & M University,
http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/javahtml/Histogram.html  and
http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~west/ 


Charles Annis, P.E.

Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com
phone: 561-352-9699
eFax:  614-455-3265
http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Justin Ashmall
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 5:46 AM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] Re-binning histogram data

Hi,

Short Version:
Is there a function to re-bin a histogram to new, broader bins?

Long version: I'm trying to create a histogram, however my input-data is 
itself in the form of a fine-grained histogram, i.e. numbers of counts 
in regular one-second bins. I want to produce a histogram of, say, 
10-minute bins (though possibly irregular bins also).

I suppose I could re-create a data set as expected by the hist() function 
(i.e. if time t=3600 has 6 counts, add six entries of 3600 to a list) 
however this seems neither elegant nor efficient (though I'd be pleased to 
be mistaken!). I could then re-create a histogram as normal.

I guessing there's a better solution however! Apologies if this is a basic 
question - I'm rather new to R and trying to get up to speed.

Regards,

Justin

______________________________________________
R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide!
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html

Liaw, Andy

2006-Jun-09 02:27 UTC

head link

[R] Re-binning histogram data

I'm not sure why you would consider density plots "modern". 
Kernel density
estimators were proposed in 1956 and 1962, though they were not used
commonly until the computational powers caught up.
 
Also, I think the advantages of density plots over histograms far out-weight
their possible shortcomings.  If you are unwilling to go that far, at least
consider replacing histograms with ASH plots.
 
[I wouldn't go quite as far as Bert.  Occasionally I still look at
histograms, but _very_ rarely.]
 
Andy

  _____  

From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch on behalf of Fran?ois Pinard
Sent: Thu 6/8/2006 7:53 PM
To: Berton Gunter
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] Re-binning histogram data [Broadcast]



[Berton Gunter] 
> I would argue that histograms are outdated relics and that density  
> plots (whatever your favorite flavor is) should **always** be used 
> instead these days. 
When a now retired researcher paid us a visit, I showed him a density 
plot produced by R over some data he did work a lot, before he left. 
I, too, find them rather sexy, and I wanted to impress him with some of 
the pleasures of R, especially knowing he has been a dedicated user of 
SAS in his times.  Yet, this old and wise man _immediately_ caught that 
the density curve was leaking a tiny bit through the extrema. 

Not a big deal of course -- and he did like what he saw.  Nevertheless, 
this reminded me that we should be careful at not dismissing too lightly 
years of accumulated knowledge, experience and know-how, merely because 
we give in joyful enthusiasm for more recent things. 

Let me make a comparison, looking at the R mailing lists themselves.  
Some would much like sending HTML email in here: they would get colours, 
use various fonts, offer links, and have indentation which dynamically 
adapts on the receiving end to the window size of the reading guy.  But 
the collective wisdom is to stick to non-HTML email, which is quite 
proven and still very functional, after all.  Some impatient people or 
dubious tools use other things than fixed-width fonts while presenting 
text/plain email, or merely ignore the usual 79-column limit and other 
oldish etiquette issues while sending it: in last analysis, they kibitz 
the community more than they help it, and deep down, are a bit selfish.  
There is a long way to go before HTML email is really ubiquitous and 
correctly supported.  Consider the long time MIME took to establish 
itself: even now, email readers correctly supporting MIME are hard to 
find -- most are fond on gadgets much more than they know standards. 

Another comparison which pops to my mind is how some people fanatically 
try to impose UTF-8 all around, saying that ASCII or ISO-8859-1 (and 
many others) are part of the prehistory of computers.  When mere users, 
they can always talk without making too much damage.  But I've seen 
a few maintainers going overboard on such matters, consciously breaking 
software to force their convictions forward: "Crois ou meurs!" as we
say
in French (approximately: "Believe or perish!").  Here, just like for 
HTML mail or nicer bitmapped R graphics, Unicode does have technical 
merit; the truth is that we are _far_ from mastering everything about 
it, and there are lots of open issues that are not strictly technical. 

Many proponent of these various things are tempted to say that they want 
to clean out the planet of outdated relics (I liked your expression!) 
and have the honest feeling they do trigger overall progress.  Moreover, 
new good things do not necessarily make older things wrong.  In a word, 
we should rather wait for progress with calm, and with respectful care 
of what already exists.  Progress will impose itself slowly over time, 
and is not so much in need of forceful evangelists. :-) 

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca
<http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca/>  

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