R help - Aug 2011 - Hmisc::rcorr on a 'data.frame'?

Dear all
?Hmisc::rcorr states that it takes as main argument "a numeric
matrix". But is it normal that it fails in such an ugly way on a data
frame? (See below.) If the function didn't attempt any conversion to a
matrix, I would have expected it to state that in the error message
that it didn't accept 'data.frame' objects in its input. Also, I
vaguely remember having used in the past rcorr() on data frames.

Regards
Liviu
> require(Hmisc)
> rcorr(mtcars[ , 1:4])
Error in storage.mode(x) <- if (.R.) "double" else
"single" :
  (list) object cannot be coerced to type
'double'
> rcorr(as.matrix(mtcars[ , 1:4]))
       mpg   cyl  disp    hp
mpg   1.00 -0.85 -0.85 -0.78
cyl  -0.85  1.00  0.90  0.83
disp -0.85  0.90  1.00  0.79
hp   -0.78  0.83  0.79  1.00

n= 32


P
     mpg cyl disp hp
mpg       0   0    0
cyl   0       0    0
disp  0   0        0
hp    0   0   0




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I don't see anything wrong with using as.matrix.  The documentation
doesn't
say it will support a data frame.
Frank

Liviu Andronic wrote:
> 
> Dear all
> ?Hmisc::rcorr states that it takes as main argument "a numeric
> matrix". But is it normal that it fails in such an ugly way on a data
> frame? (See below.) If the function didn't attempt any conversion to a
> matrix, I would have expected it to state that in the error message
> that it didn't accept 'data.frame' objects in its input. Also,
I
> vaguely remember having used in the past rcorr() on data frames.
> 
> Regards
> Liviu
> 
>> require(Hmisc)
>> rcorr(mtcars[ , 1:4])
> Error in storage.mode(x) <- if (.R.) "double" else
"single" :
>   (list) object cannot be coerced to type 'double'
>> rcorr(as.matrix(mtcars[ , 1:4]))
>        mpg   cyl  disp    hp
> mpg   1.00 -0.85 -0.85 -0.78
> cyl  -0.85  1.00  0.90  0.83
> disp -0.85  0.90  1.00  0.79
> hp   -0.78  0.83  0.79  1.00
> 
> n= 32
> 
> 
> P
>      mpg cyl disp hp
> mpg       0   0    0
> cyl   0       0    0
> disp  0   0        0
> hp    0   0   0
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Do you know how to read?
> http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
> http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
> Do you know how to write?
> http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail
> 
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 

-----
Frank Harrell
Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University
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