Summarizing variables with rxSummary()

Let's summarize some data using the rxSummary() and rxCrossTabs() functions.

Use rxSummary() to summarize the variables corresponding to the day of the week, the closing price, and the volume traded.

The simple syntax is: rxSummary(formula, data)

formula - A formula containing the variables that you want to summarize. Typically this formula only has variables on the right side of the ~. In this example, we will separate different variables with a +.
data - The dataset in which you want to look for variables specified in formula.

Go ahead and use rxSummary() to summarize the variables corresponding to the day of the week, the closing price, and the volume traded.

If we wanted to weight each observation differently, then we can use either the pweights or the fweights argument. pweights correspond to probability weights, while fweights correspond to frequency weights.

Go ahead and summarize the variables corresponding to the day of the week and closing price again. This time, use the fweights argument to use the volume traded as a frequency weight.

You should notice that the frequency counts for the day of the week variable are substantially higher.

You can also compute cross tabulations and frequency counts by using the rxCrossTabs() function.

The simple syntax of rxCrossTabs() is very similar to rxSummary():

rxCrossTabs(formula, data)

formula - A formula containing the variables that you want to cross tabulate. This formula operates very similarly to the formula provided to the open-source function xtabs().
data - The dataset in which you want to look for variables specified in formula.

Go ahead and use rxCrossTabs() to compute the frequencies for each level in the variable corresponding to the day of the week. The use of frequency and probability weights are also available in this function via the fweights and pweights arguments, respectively.

Exercise

Summarizing variables with rxSummary()

Instructions