R help - Aug 2007 - Does anyone.... worth a warning?!? No warning at all

Een ingesloten tekst met niet-gespecificeerde tekenset is
van het bericht gescrubt ...
Naam: niet beschikbaar
Url:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20070820/a4fb056c/attachment.pl

On 20/08/2007, at 9:54 PM, Tom Willems wrote:
> dear Mathew
>
> mean is a Generic function
>
> mean(x...)
>
> in wich x is a data object, like a  data frame a list a numeric  
> vector...
>
> so in your example it only reads the first character and then  
> reports it.
>
> try x = c(1,1,2)
> mean(x)
	I think you've completely missed the point.  I'm sure Mathew now  
understands the syntax
	of the mean function.  His point was that it would be very easy for  
someone to use this
	function incorrectly --- and he indicated very clearly *why*, by  
giving an example using max().

	If mean() could be made safer to use by incorporating a warning,  
without unduly adding to
	overheads, then it would seem sensible to incorporate such a  
warning.  Or to change the
	mean() function so that mean(1,2,3) returns ``2'' --- just as max 
(1,2,3) returns ``3'' --- as
	Mathew *initially* (and quite reasonably) expected it to do.

				cheers,

					Rolf Turner

######################################################################
Attention:\ This e-mail message is privileged and confidenti...{{dropped}}

It's always seemed to me that 'mean' behaved as expected, and
'max' et al
were peculiar. If you passed 2 or more vectors to a function would you
really expect it to concatenate them before doing it's proper job? I'd
rather expect it to behave like 'pmax' and compare them element by
element.

Maybe 'max' should generate a warning.

Cheers,  Mike



Tom Willems-2 wrote:
> 
> dear Mathew
> 
> mean is a Generic function 
> 
> mean(x...)
> 
> in wich x is a data object, like a  data frame a list a numeric vector...
> 
> so in your example it only reads the first character and then reports it.
> 
> try x = c(1,1,2)
> mean(x)
> 
> kind regards,
> Tom
> 
> 
> Disclaimer: click here
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> 
-- 
View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Does-anyone....-worth-a-warning-%21--No-warning-at-all-tf4297988.html#a12247316
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.