Dear Martin, Thanks for explaining this.
One thing that might be considered IMHO could be to replace the named column heads (or both column and row head if so desired) with a number corresponding to the position of the term in the printed table. 1 2 3 4 pH * 1 I(pH^2) * B 1 Ca . . 1 I(Ca^2) . . B or even 1 2 3 4 1 * 1 2 * B 1 3 . . 1 4 . . B That keeps the property of square formatting of the table, well almost. Then a line under the correlation table explaining the 1, 2, 3, etc. as well and the legend for the symbolic characters. Also printing the legend attribute as it is presented for the regression terms (i.e. without attr(,"legend") and [1]) would also improve the look of the thing. All the best, Gavin %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% Dr. Gavin Simpson [T] +44 (0)20 7679 5522 ENSIS Research Fellow [F] +44 (0)20 7679 7565 ENSIS Ltd. & ECRC [E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] UCL Department of Geography [W] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/cv/ 26 Bedford Way [W] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/ London. WC1H 0AP. %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% -----Original Message----- From: Martin Maechler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 28 February 2003 14:44 To: gavin.simpson Cc: 'r-help' Subject: Re: [R] summary.glm() print problem(?) with cor = TRUE >>>>> "GS" == Gavin Simpson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>>> on Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:07:55 -0000 writes: GS> Hi, GS> I've had a look the bug list and searched though the R documentation, email GS> lists etc. but didn't see anything on this: GS> when I do: GS> summary(species.glm1, correlation = TRUE) GS> I get a correlation matrix like this: GS> Correlation of Coefficients: GS> ( p I(H C GS> pH * 1 GS> I(pH^2) * B 1 GS> Ca . . 1 GS> I(Ca^2) . . B GS> attr(,"legend") GS> [1] 0 ` ' 0.3 `.' 0.6 `,' 0.8 `+' 0.9 `*' 0.95 `B' 1 GS> I'm not worried about the symbolic representation, but GS> should the columns be labelled this way? I can work out GS> which is which, but it isn't immediately clear and GS> doesn't look "nice". Is this printing intended? [we are talking about the print method for class "summary.lm", i.e. print.summary.glm() , and *.*.lm() ] Yes, these column labels have been critized before and rightly so. Currently, for R-devel, the default has even been changed from `symbolic.cor = p > 4' to `symbolic.cor = FALSE' -- mostly because of this, AFAIR -- and against my own opinion. I would have voted to change it to `symbolic.cor = p > 6' or so (*and* to improve the column labels, too, see below). As the original implementor I can tell you: I've liked the idea of graphical correlation matrices which motivated the "symbolic.cor" option to print.summary.* and the underlying symnum() function. Since this is ASCII graphic, and showing (the lower triangle of) a square matrix, I've felt the matrix should remain close to ``square'', also in its graphical form. Hence, the row labels were kept and the column labels abbreviated "as much as possible" using R's internal abbreviate(). And this has given the very ugly "(" for "(Intercept)". One easy possibility was to use more customized version of abbreviate() either inside symnum() or by postprocessing .. Given the topic, I'm really interested about your opinions on the symbolic printing of correlation matrices. GS> Because when I do: GS> print(summary(species.glm3, correlation = TRUE), symbolic.cor = FALSE) GS> I get a much more nicely formatted correlation matrix: GS> Correlation of Coefficients: GS> (Intercept) pH I(pH^2) Ca GS> pH -0.9321 GS> I(pH^2) 0.9233 -0.9968 GS> Ca 0.1442 -0.4893 0.4950 GS> I(Ca^2) -0.1619 0.5009 -0.5162 -0.9876 It nicer only as long as it stays small, IMHO. no longer for a 10 x 10 case; look at the examples in help(symnum) ! Note that you can always say sglm <- summary(species.glm3, correlation = TRUE) sglm$corr to see the matrix in its usual form Martin Maechler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/ Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum LEO C16 Leonhardstr. 27 ETH (Federal Inst. Technology) 8092 Zurich SWITZERLAND phone: x-41-1-632-3408 fax: ...-1228 <>< ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help