Median if labelled

[zachariae]

Dear all,

during the last days, I faced a problem. I was no longer able to calculate the median from a column when it was labelled using the Hmisc function.

Greetings, Silke

[SamGG]

Hi, From a basic R point of view, if the "labelled" objects are the values of the columns, then this column is a factor, and IIRC no numerical computation could be done on a factor. Do you have a short and reproducible example? Best.

[zachariae]

Hi, thank you for the clarification. Actually the problem with calculating the median occurs not with df, but when the df has other classes as well such as tbl_df...- So you may not be the right address to report the problem?

MG, Silke

test_data <- data.frame(AGE = c(40.9, 38.6, 33.4, 25.0, 29.5, 31.5,
                                31.5, 25.9, 31.4, 27.6, 42.4, 29.8,
                                31.6, 43.4, 31.3, 35.7, 35.7, 29.4, 
                                42.4, 47.7, 40.3, 45.2, 36.1, 38.6, 48.4, 28.1,
                                41.8, 41.0, 32.4, 34.8, 28.3))

str(test_data)

test_median <- test_data %>%
  dplyr::select(AGE) %>%
  median()

test_mean <- test_data %>%
  dplyr::select(AGE) %>%
  mean()

[SamGG]

IMHO the error relates to the use of dplyr, not Hmisc. The select() returns a data.frame, not a vector, that's why median() is complaining. You should use summarise to apply the median

test_data %>%
  summarise(median(AGE))

Answers at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61158926/median-in-r-needs-numeric-data

Personal point of view: I didn't move to those nice functions, because every time I tried I get such error due to that I am so familiar with the base functions.

Please close the issue unless you feel it's related to the use of a Hmisc function. Have a nice day.