Summarizing Statistical Data
Jane M Horgan · 2020
This chapter explores some of the procedures available in R to summarize statistical data, and gives some examples of writing programs. Measures of central tendency are typical or central points in the data. The standard deviation measures how much the data values deviate from their average. The quantiles divide the data into proportions, usually into quarters called quartiles, tenths called deciles, and percentages called percentiles. A quicker way of summarizing the data is to use the summary function. Programming is extremely simple in R because of the way it handles vectors and data frames. There are various ways of developing programs in R. The most useful way of writing programs is by means of R 's own built-in editor called Scripts. Programs may also be developed in a text editor, like Notepad, saved with the .R extension and retrieved using the source statement.