David is right. I am looking for the ecfd for fs$numstudents. The other column is just an id.
I guess I don't know how to read the R documentation when it comes to functions. looking at the documentation, i now notice that it says "Compute an empirical cummulative distribution function and not a vector. But still I would had assumed that in ecdf(x) ... the x is the argument. So ecdf(fs$numstudents)(unique(fs$numstudents)) =============== ================== function arguments Yes? But I can't read that from the documentation? I suspect it has something to those dots .... in the arguments which I don't understand. Why it says usage ecdf(x) when it's clearly not the case? I don't get it. Gawesh On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 11:02 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsem...@comcast.net> wrote: > > On Oct 16, 2011, at 3:53 PM, Dennis Murphy wrote: > >> Hi: >> >> I don't understand what you're attempting to do. Wouldn't courseid be >> a categorical variable with a numeric label? If that is so, why are >> you trying to compute an EDF? An EDF computes cumulative relative >> frequency of a random variable, which by definition is numeric. If we >> were talking about EDFs for a distribution of student course grades on >> a numeric point system by course, that would make some sense, but I >> don't see how the course IDs themselves qualify as being on an >> interval scale of measurement. Could you clarify your intent? > > Huh? gawesh asked for ecdf on numstrudents (not courseid) ... pretty > clearly a numeric value for which an ECDF should make sense. > > -- > David. > > -- >> >> Dennis >> >> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 8:31 AM, gj <gaw...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Hi, >>> Newbie here. I read the R for Beginners but i still don't get this. >>> >>> I have the following data (this is just an example) in a CSV file: >>> >>> courseid numstudents >>> 101 209 >>> 141 13 >>> 246 140 >>> 263 8 >>> 321 10 >>> 361 10 >>> 364 28 >>> 365 25 >>> 366 23 >>> 367 34 >>> >>> I load my data using: >>> >>> fs<-read.csv(file="C:\\num_students_inallmodules.csv",header=T, sep=',') >>> >>> I want to get the ecdf. So, I looked at the ?ecdf which says >>> usage:ecdf(x) >>> >>> So I expected ecdf(fs$numstudents) to work >>> >>> Instead it just returned: >>> Call: ecdf(fs$numstudents) >>> x[1:210] = 1, 2, 3, ..., 3717, 4538 >>> >>> After Googling, got this to work: >>> ecdf(fs$numstudents)(unique(fs$numstudents)) >>> >>> But I don't understand why if the ?ecdf says usage is ecdf(x) ... I >>> need to use ecdf(fs$numstudents)(unique(fs$numstudents)) to get this >>> to work? >>> >>> Can somebody explain this to me? >>> >>> Regards >>> Gawesh >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> 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. >>> >> >> ______________________________________________ >> 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. > > David Winsemius, MD > Heritage Laboratories > West Hartford, CT > > ______________________________________________ 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.