5 ms·

Other things: 1. Unmatched simplicity of dplyr for data manipulation. 2. Great graphs with ggplot2. Oh, and 1-based indexing. Try telling economics students

by dash2 3y ago

Other things: 1. Unmatched simplicity of dplyr for data manipulation. 2. Great graphs with ggplot2. Oh, and 1-based indexing. Try telling economics students why 3..5 means elements 4 and 5.

jraph 3y ago
(edit: we are actually agreeing, see replies) Doesn't 3..5 mean elements 3 and 4 : the 3rd and the 4th? 0-based indexing might feel less intuitive actually (element 3 is the 4th, and element 4 is the 5th). I don't know much R, I'm assuming that in the n..m notation, n is included and m is excluded (edit: also included, see replies). I don't now about economy, but I think mathematicians use 0-indexed and 1-indexed sequences interchangeably and they usually (have to) specify which is the first term (u0 or u1).
- williamdclt 3y ago
  > Doesn't 3..5 mean elements 3 and 4 : the 3rd and the 4th? 0-based indexing might feel less intuitive actually Yes, you’re agreeing! The point of the parent was that 0-indexing is less easy to grasp
  - jraph 3y ago
    Oh, right! I parsed the last sentence in a weird way I guess. Also thanks rcthompson for the precision about intervals being inclusive on both ends in R.
- dash2 3y ago
  Ordinary humans count from 1.
- rcthompson 3y ago
  R's indexing is not only 1-based, it's inclusive on both ends. So indexing from 3 to 5 actually gets you elements 3, 4, and 5. I've programmed a bunch with both R and 0-based languages and I greatly prefer R's way of doing indexing.
  - trealira 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's like this in Pascal, too. Which makes sense, since it's the only way to reasonably index 1-based arrays. For example, you'd expect the following code to set arr to the set "1, 2, 3, 4, 5", not to leave the last element uninitialized. var arr: array [1 .. 5] of integer; begin for i := 1 to 5 do arr[i] := i end; Normally you would write "for i := low(arr) to high(arr)". I just wrote the numbers "1 to 5" to be explicit here.

by dash2 3y ago

Other things: 1. Unmatched simplicity of dplyr for data manipulation. 2. Great graphs with ggplot2. Oh, and 1-based indexing. Try telling economics students why 3..5 means elements 4 and 5.

jraph 3y ago

(edit: we are actually agreeing, see replies) Doesn't 3..5 mean elements 3 and 4 : the 3rd and the 4th? 0-based indexing might feel less intuitive actually (element 3 is the 4th, and element 4 is the 5th). I don't know much R, I'm assuming that in the n..m notation, n is included and m is excluded (edit: also included, see replies). I don't now about economy, but I think mathematicians use 0-indexed and 1-indexed sequences interchangeably and they usually (have to) specify which is the first term (u0 or u1).

williamdclt 3y ago
> Doesn't 3..5 mean elements 3 and 4 : the 3rd and the 4th? 0-based indexing might feel less intuitive actually Yes, you’re agreeing! The point of the parent was that 0-indexing is less easy to grasp
- jraph 3y ago
  Oh, right! I parsed the last sentence in a weird way I guess. Also thanks rcthompson for the precision about intervals being inclusive on both ends in R.
dash2 3y ago
Ordinary humans count from 1.
rcthompson 3y ago
R's indexing is not only 1-based, it's inclusive on both ends. So indexing from 3 to 5 actually gets you elements 3, 4, and 5. I've programmed a bunch with both R and 0-based languages and I greatly prefer R's way of doing indexing.
- trealira 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's like this in Pascal, too. Which makes sense, since it's the only way to reasonably index 1-based arrays. For example, you'd expect the following code to set arr to the set "1, 2, 3, 4, 5", not to leave the last element uninitialized. var arr: array [1 .. 5] of integer; begin for i := 1 to 5 do arr[i] := i end; Normally you would write "for i := low(arr) to high(arr)". I just wrote the numbers "1 to 5" to be explicit here.