R help - Jun 2008 - Usefulness of "scale" function

Hi all,

I found this snippet in a gene expression
clustering code.

__BEGIN__
temp <- readLines("GSE1110_series_matrix.txt");
cat(temp[-grep("^!|^\"$", temp)],
file="GSE1110clean.txt", sep="\n");
mydata <- read.delim("GSE1110clean.txt", header=T,
sep="\t")

mydatascale <- t(scale(t(mydata)))


I am wondering, in general:

1. What is the purpose of 'scale' function?
2. When one should use it?


-- 
Gundala Viswanath

Type ?scale in R for the answer :)

Gundala Viswanath wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I found this snippet in a gene expression
> clustering code.
>
> __BEGIN__
> temp <- readLines("GSE1110_series_matrix.txt");
> cat(temp[-grep("^!|^\"$", temp)],
file="GSE1110clean.txt", sep="\n");
> mydata <- read.delim("GSE1110clean.txt", header=T,
sep="\t")
>
> mydatascale <- t(scale(t(mydata)))
>
>
> I am wondering, in general:
>
> 1. What is the purpose of 'scale' function?
> 2. When one should use it?
>
>
>