harmonic.mean function

Find the harmonic mean of a vector, matrix, or columns of a data.frame

The harmonic mean is merely the reciprocal of the arithmetic mean of the reciprocals.

harmonic.mean(x,na.rm=TRUE,zero=TRUE)

Arguments

• x: a vector, matrix, or data.frame
• na.rm: na.rm=TRUE remove NA values before processing
• zero: If TRUE, then if there are any zeros, return 0, else, return the harmonic mean of the non-zero elements

Details

Included as an example for teaching about functions. As well as for a discussion of how to estimate central tendencies. Also used in statsBy to weight by the harmonic mean.

Values of 0 can be included (in which case the harmonic.mean = 0) or converted to NA according to the zero option.

Added the zero option, March, 2017.

Returns

The harmonic mean(s)

Note

Included as a simple demonstration of how to write a function

Examples

x <- seq(1,5)
x2 <- x^2
x2[2] <- NA
y <- x - 1
X <- data.frame(x,x2,y)
harmonic.mean(x)
harmonic.mean(x2)
harmonic.mean(X)
harmonic.mean(X,na.rm=FALSE)
harmonic.mean(X,zero=FALSE)