similar to: suggested minor clarification in fix help file

"sum" (and perhaps other functions?) allows partial argument name matching after its three-dots argument: > sum(1:4, NA, n=78, na.rm=FALSE) [1] 10 > sum(1:4, NA, n=78, na.rm=TRUE) [1] 11 I can see there could be a discussion about whether or not this is a bug, but I think all will agree that it's a might peculiar. This is done in 2.0.1 but the same behavior is in 1.8.1.

'assign' does not give a warning if 'x' has length greater than 1 -- it just uses the first element: assign(c('a1', 'a2'), 1:2) One way of thinking about this is that people using 'assign' get what they deserve. The other is that it is used seldom enough that adding a warning isn't going to slow things down appreciably. Patrick Burns patrick at

There is now a tutorial on bootstrapping and other resampling methods at: http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/bootstrap_resampling.html Corrections and other suggestions are welcome. The project started because a novice asked me about bootstrapping. My response was, "How dare you bug me while I'm playing with my cats, just google for it." My correspondent was not very impressed

I had an error to debug that turned out to be essentially: > NULL * matrix(1:4, 2) Error: dim<- length of dims do not match the length of object The equivalent of the NULL was a variable that was meant to be a scalar. It took me a while to track down the problem because I was focusing on looking for arrays that were different than my expectation. I think it could save substantial

You may recall that there was a discussion of a technical report from the statistical consulting group at UCLA. I have a draft of a comment on that report, which you can get from http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Flotsam/uclaRcomment_draft1.pdf I'm interested in comments: corrections, additions, deletions. Patrick Burns patrick at burns-stat.com +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com

There's a new page on the Burns Statistics website http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html that looks at spreadsheets from a quality assurance perspective. It presents R as a suitable alternative to spreadsheets. Also there are several specific problems with Excel that are highlighted, including the status of statistical functionality in Excel. Patrick Burns Burns

I'm not sure if this has much significance or not -- but it sounds rather ominous. It doesn't appear to be new as it happens with 2.0.0 in Linux (but the formatting of the warning messages has improved). > contour(array(3e10, c(10,10), list(1:10, 11:20))) Warning: stack imbalance in 'contour', 20 then 24 Warning: stack imbalance in '.Internal', 19 then 23 Warning:

I'm not sure if the following is a bug or a feature: > jjmat <- array(1:6, c(2,3), list(c('ABC', 'DEF'), c('xyz', 'tuv', 'qrs'))) > jjdf <- as.data.frame(jjmat) > jjmat['AB', ] Error: subscript out of bounds > jjdf['AB',] xyz tuv qrs ABC 1 3 5 > jjmat[, 'tu'] Error: subscript out of bounds

I'm not sure what is going on with this one -- maybe it will make sense to someone. R1.9.0 under Windows 2000. 1) Start up R. 2) search() # works as expected 3) library(fBasics) # from Rmetrics # but at least one of its required packages is not present on the machine 4) search() # nothing appears at all but the prompt Once all of the required packages are present, then step 3 no longer

In 2.0.1 the command help.search('goodness of fit') comes up empty. "ks.test" is what I was looking for, though perhaps there could be others? Patrick Burns Burns Statistics patrick@burns-stat.com +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")

The assignment form of 'formals' strips attributes (or something close to that) from the values in the list. This wasn't intentional, was it? The current behavior (2.0.0 through 2.1.0 on Windows at least): > fjj <- function() x > formals(fjj) <- list(x=c(a=2, b=4)) > fjj function (x = c(2, 4)) x Previous behavior: > fjj <- function() x > formals(fjj)

In the details section for 'all.equal' (in the paragraph on complex values) it says 'all.numeric.numeric'. I presume that should be 'all.equal.numeric'. When two integer vectors differ, it is possible to get overflow: > set.seed(1) > r1 <- .Random.seed > set.seed(2) > r2 <- .Random.seed > all.equal(r1, r2) [1] "Mean relative difference:

The two statements below with 'names' are conceptually the same. The second performs the desired operation while the first does not. > xx <- list(A=c(a=1, b=2)) > names(xx$A[1]) <- "changed" > xx $A a b 1 2 > names(xx$A)[1] <- "changed" > xx $A changed b 1 2 This is observed in 2.4.0 on Linux as well as 2.7.0 and 2.8.0

I recently had a discussion with a user about loading and attaching in R. I was surprised that the help files don't provide a very clear picture. From my point of view 'load' and 'attach' are very similar operations, the difference being that 'attach' creates a new database on the search list while 'load' puts all the objects into the global environment.

I don't think I understand you entirely, but here are a couple things. You need to shorten the loop so you don't run off the end. You basically just write the code as you've stated it except that "and" is && for single values and & for vectors You don't say what should happen if the test is not true. You can probably use "ifelse" instead of a

The following is at least as much out of intellectual curiosity as for practical reasons. On reviewing some code written by novices to R, I came across: crossprod(x, y)[1,1] I thought, "That isn't a very S way of saying that, I wonder what the penalty is for using 'crossprod'." To my surprise the penalty was substantially negative. Handily the client had S-PLUS as

Burns Statistics has just released its POP Portfolio Optimizer, which is available for a license fee. This has an interface designed to run under either S-PLUS or R. In addition to portfolio selection and asset allocation, there is functionality to generate random portfolios, and to estimate statistical factor models. The website includes a new working paper on the best approach to using

This is undoubtedly a bug, but I doubt that it is really down to R. Synopsis: a certain matrix causes eigen(symmetric=TRUE) to produce NaN's in some of the returned eigenvectors. This happens using SuSe 8.2 Professional and the precompiled R rpm (happens in both 1.8.1 and 1.7.1). I don't see it under Windows. To reproduce the bug: The matrix (75 by 75, about 45K) is in

Hy all, I apologize i've used rownames instead of colnames in my first exemple. (that's why i changed the mail object) I was on mars when i wrote my question... Every answer where correct ... but, because i've made a wrong question, people wern't able to understand... So finally i'm speaking about colnames : Let's be more precise: I've got a query that gives me for

Suggest you try R 1.9.1 patched. This is what I get on Windows XP with that: > matrixObj <- array(1:4, c(2,2)) > class(matrixObj) <- "matrix" > fooObj <- matrixObj > class(fooObj) <- "foo" > fooObj[1:2] [1] 1 2 > matrixObj[1:2] [1] 1 2 > getAnywhere("[.matrix") no object named '[.matrix' was found >