Dear WizaRds, unfortunately, I have been unable to replace the '99' and '999' entries in
library(UsingR) attach(babies) as definitions for missing values NA, because sometimes the 99 entry is indeed a correct value. Usually, or so I thought, NAs can easily replace a, say, 999 entry via mymat[mymat==999] <- "yodl" in a matrix or data frame. Alas, the babies' dataset also includes 99 entries as true values. So, here is what I did: #to remove all 999: babies[babies==999] <- NA , but to remove the 99 in columns nr. 10,12,17 I have come to a complete stop. The corny idea of babies$ht[babies$ht==99] <- NA babies$dht[babies$dht==99] <- NA babies$dwt[babies$dwt==99] <- NA works, but seems to show that I have not really understood the art of indexing, have I? The archives did not really offer enough insight for me to solve the problem, I am ashamed. I tried something with babies[is.element(babies[,c(10,12,17)], 99)] <- NA # beeep, wrong or babies[babies[,c(10,12,17)]==99] # no way, indeed. detach(babies) There must be a more intelligent and elegant solution. Also, what is the nr. of rows after I remove all NA entries? Easy example: frog <- matrix(1:42, ncol=3) frog[sample(42, 7)] <- NA length(frog[!is.na(frog)]) # ok, but I want to know the nr of rows without NAs dim(frog[!is.na(frog),]) #no nrow(!is.na(frog)) # no Thank you for your help and Cheers mark ______________________________________________ R-help@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.