I'm not sure how returning an incorrect result is ever a 'positive' feature but
at least the documentation could more clearly warn users that this method
behaves differently in these cases -- summary(rock[,1]) vs summary(rock[,1:2])
-- and that the method can and does return incorrect results without any
warning messages.
I would encourage anyone teaching introductory R to look at the 'epicalc'
package. The re-vamped function 'summ' in that package returns correct results
regardless - summ(rock), summ(rock$area). In addition, when you only ask for
one column you not only get the correct results, you also get a bonus
distribution plot.
I'd would like all of our students to use R, but little things like this are
huge stumbling blocks for them.
-jeanne
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