Apply a Function to a Variable Within Factor Levels
Apply a Function to a Variable Within Factor Levels
Applies a function, typically to compute a single statistic, like a mean, median, or standard deviation, within levels of a factor or within combinations of levels of two or more factors to produce a table of statistics. This function provides a formula interface to the standard R tapply function.
formula: a two-sided formula of the form variable ~ factor.1 + factor.2 + ... + factor.n or, equivalently, variable ~ factor.1*factor.2* ... *factor.n. The variables on the right-hand side of the formula are normally factors or are otherwise coerced to factors.
fun: a function, like mean, median, or sd, that takes a vector first argument and typically returns a single number as its value.
data: an optional data frame within which to find the variable and factor(s).
na.action: a function to handle missing values, as in statistical modeling functions like lm; the default is na.pass.
...: arguments to pass to the function given in the fun argument, such as (commonly) na.rm=TRUE.
targs: a list of optional arguments to pass to tapply.
Details
The function given by fun is applied to the values of the left-hand-side variable in formula within (combination of) levels of the factor(s) given in the right-hand side of formula, producing a table of statistics.
Returns
The object returned by tapply, typically simply printed.