On Thu, Dec 25, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Mike Miller <mbmille...@gmail.com> wrote: > I do think I get what is going on with this, but why should I buy into this > conceptualization? Why is it better to say that a matrix *is* a vector than > to say that a matrix *contains* a vector? The latter seems to be the more > common way of thinking but such things. Even in R you've had to construct > two different definitions of "vector" to deal with the inconsistency created > by the "matrix is a vector" way of thinking. So there must be something > really good about it that I am not understanding (and I'm not being > facetious or ironic!)
I think its the idea that in R all data objects are vectors (for some notion of vector) in the sense that all Lisp objects are lists, all APL objects are arrays and all tcl objects are character strings. -- Statistics & Software Consulting GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.
