Dear R-developers,
I just realized that rank() behaves inconsistent if combining one of na.last in
{TRUE|FALSE} with a ties.method in {"average"|"random"|"max"|"min"}.
The documentation suggests that e.g. with na.last=TRUE NAs are treated like the
last (=highest) value, which obviously is not the case:
> rank(c(1,2,2,NA,NA), na.last = TRUE, ties.method = c("average", "first",
> "random", "max", "min")[1])
[1] 1.0 2.5 2.5 4.0 5.0
I'd expect
[1] 1.0 2.5 2.5 4.5 4.5
rather, but in fact NAs seem to be always treated ties.method = "first". I have
no idea in which situation one could desire e.g. ties.method = "average" except
for NAs!?
I am aware that the prototype behaves like this and R ever since behaves like
this, however to me this appears very unfortunate. In order not to 'break'
existing code, what about adding ties.methods
{"NAaverage"|"NArandom"|"NAmax"|"NAmin"} that behave consistently?
Best regards
Jens Oehlschlägel
P.S. Please cc. me, I am not on the list
> version
_
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch i386
os mingw32
system i386, mingw32
status
major 2
minor 4.0
year 2006
month 10
day 03
svn rev 39566
language R
version.string R version 2.4.0 (2006-10-03)
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