I despair. Why do you keep insisting that black is white?
The OP wanted to be able to specify an argument to boxplot()
that would cause it to plot mild and extreme outliers with
different symbols.
THIS CAN'T BE DONE!!!
There is no such argument specification.
The response to which I objected implied that it *could* be
done and would have had the OP tearing his hair out reading
and re-reading the help pages and wondering what he was missing.
OF COURSE it ``can be done'' with some hacking. You can do anything
in R. But it can't be done simply by specifying an argument to the
given function.
When I said that the appropriate response was ``it can't be done''
I was being stylistically terse. What I would actually have said
is something like ``It can't be done directly; you'll need to do
some coding to get the effect you want. I'm not sure what coding,
or how difficult it might be.'' Then somebody else could follow
up with suggestions as to appropriate code, if they felt like it.
As to whether the hacking/coding is ``substantial'', that is indeed
subjective. What is a simple task for you would very likely be pretty
daunting to the OP. If he could do it, he probably wouldn't have
asked the question in the first place.
The response to which I objected was SERIOUSLY MISLEADING. And
therefore objectionable. Full stop.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
On 20/08/2009, at 10:53 AM, Gavin Simpson wrote:
On Thu, 2009-08-20 at 09:58 +1200, Rolf Turner wrote:
On 20/08/2009, at 9:39 AM, Gavin Simpson wrote:
<snip>
Criticising correct, if cryptic or highlevel, responses to a list
where
people give their time for free, *and* not provide a more complete
solution is unfair, Rolf. The OP is free to respond and ask for
additional help once they've given it a go if they are still having
trouble..
When the ``correct response'' is seriously misleading, as
this one was --- the implication of the response was that
the specified task *could* be done (if one looked hard
enough at the help files), when in fact the specified task
can't be done (at least not without substantial hacking)
Hardly "substantial hacking" Rolf, and somewhat educational in regards
of the underlying functions used by boxplot. My suggestion is 9
lines of
code, and it only stretches to 9 because I did each step in turn to
make
it easier to understand/explain.
--- then I think criticism is merited.
Also when a clear answer (``It can't be done.'') is as easy to
give as an obscurantist misleading one (``RTFM'') then criticism
is merited.
Sorry Rolf, but "it can't be done" is somewhat subjective. All one is
doing is plotting a character on a graphics device at a certain
location, with the actual character determined on the basis of some a
priori determined indicator of "extreme" outlyingness. I showed how it
*could* be done, by manipulating the 'coef' argument of boxplot.sats
(),
which works if you can couch your definition of "extreme" in terms of
the box height.
## install.package("fortunes")
require("fortunes")
fortune("this is R")
:-)
This is not to say that I necessarily think one should do this, but
the
author of boxplot.stats must have envisaged a situation where you
might
want to alter the definition of "outlier" (not that that is the right
word in this case as these observations are potentially just extreme,
not necessarily outliers). After all, all we are doing is determining
how far from the box centre we would like to start showing individual
observations.
I admit that RTFM wasn't that helpful for a newbie ( said as much),
but
replying with "it can't be done" is just as useless if not more so. In
this case one can do it if one has some definition of "extreme" that
allows you to determine which points, if any, to draw. Showing how
that
can be done but wrapping it in suggestive language that this might not
be a "Good Idea" (TM) is better than your suggested response.
G
There is a difference between saying RTFM to a poster who has
clearly been too lazy to do his or her homework and saying RTFM
to a poster when TFM is not at all clear with respect to the
question posed. There are so many arguments to bxp() that anyone
might be forgiven for thinking ``There must be a way to do what
I want; I just haven't twigged to the correct way of putting
these arguments together.'' Deliberately steering a new user
into such a misapprehension is unforgivable.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
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