I vote to 'fortunize' Doug Bates on Hierarchical data sets: which software to use? "The widespread use of spreadsheets or SPSS data sets or SAS data sets which encourage the "single table with a gargantuan number of columns, most of which are missing data in most cases" approach to organization of longitudinal data is regrettable." http://n4.nabble.com/Hierarchical-data-sets-which-software-to-use-td1458477.html#a1470430 -- Peter Ehlers University of Calgary
Peter Ehlers wrote:> I vote to 'fortunize' Doug Bates on > > Hierarchical data sets: which software to use? > > "The widespread use of spreadsheets or SPSS data sets or SAS data sets > which encourage the "single table with a gargantuan number of columns, > most of which are missing data in most cases" approach to organization > of longitudinal data is regrettable." > > http://n4.nabble.com/Hierarchical-data-sets-which-software-to-use-td1458477.html#a1470430 > >Hmm, well, it's not like "long format" data frames (which I actually think are more common in connection with SAS's PROC MIXED) are much better. Those tend to replicate base data unnecessarily - "as if rats change sex with millisecond resolution". The correct data structure would be a relational database with multiple levels of tables, but, to my knowledge, no statistical software, including R, is prepared to deal with data in that form. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
On Fri, 5 Feb 2010, Peter Ehlers wrote:> I vote to 'fortunize' Doug Bates on > > Hierarchical data sets: which software to use? > > "The widespread use of spreadsheets or SPSS data sets or SAS data sets > which encourage the "single table with a gargantuan number of columns, > most of which are missing data in most cases" approach to organization > of longitudinal data is regrettable." > > http://n4.nabble.com/Hierarchical-data-sets-which-software-to-use-td1458477.html#a1470430Thanks, added to the devel-version on R-Forge. Z> -- > Peter Ehlers > University of Calgary > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > >