Thank you. It comes close but not exactly what I wanted. I had to scrap my column that contained character values. That column noted the name of the study. Let me try show you here
Best if viewed in courier font > coinfection study HPV6 HPV11 CoInfect other 1 Wiatrak 2004 31 23 4 0 2 Draganov 2006 6 14 3 0 3 Gabbott 1997 19 24 1 0 4 Gerein 2005 17 14 0 7 5 Michael 2005 8 5 0 1 6 Rabah 2001 29 32 0 0 7 Maloney 2006 4 4 7 0 > str(coinfection) 'data.frame': 7 obs. of 5 variables: $ study : chr "Wiatrak 2004" "Draganov 2006" "Gabbott 1997" "Gerein 2005" ... $ HPV6 : num 31 6 19 17 8 29 4 $ HPV11 : num 23 14 24 14 5 32 4 $ CoInfect: num 4 3 1 0 0 0 7 $ other : num 0 0 0 7 1 0 0 I had tried the following and was getting nowhere > as.table(coinfection) Error in as.table.default(coinfection) : cannot coerce into a table > as.table(coinfection[,-1]) Error in as.table.default(coinfection[, -1]) : cannot coerce into a table Thanks to you was able to make some progress. > as.table(as.matrix(coinfection)) study HPV6 HPV11 CoInfect other 1 Wiatrak 2004 31 23 4 0 2 Draganov 2006 6 14 3 0 3 Gabbott 1997 19 24 1 0 4 Gerein 2005 17 14 0 7 5 Michael 2005 8 5 0 1 6 Rabah 2001 29 32 0 0 7 Maloney 2006 4 4 7 0 SO FAR THIS LOOKS GOOD BUT THEN LOOK > prop.table(as.table(as.matrix(coinfection)),1)#the main reason for doing this Error in sum(..., na.rm = na.rm) : invalid 'type' (character) of argument > prop.table(as.table(as.matrix(coinfection[,-1])),1)#this is to get rid of the > variable called "study" HPV6 HPV11 CoInfect other 1 0.53448276 0.39655172 0.06896552 0.00000000 2 0.26086957 0.60869565 0.13043478 0.00000000 3 0.43181818 0.54545455 0.02272727 0.00000000 4 0.44736842 0.36842105 0.00000000 0.18421053 5 0.57142857 0.35714286 0.00000000 0.07142857 6 0.47540984 0.52459016 0.00000000 0.00000000 7 0.26666667 0.26666667 0.46666667 0.00000000 WORKS PERFECTLY, EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED EXCEPT I HAVE LOST THE NAME OF THE STUDY AND HAVE TO GO BACK TO LOOK AT WHICH DATA BELONGS TO WHICH STUDY. THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD THE DATA IN ITS RAWEST FORM: A TWO COLUMN DATA FRAME WHERE COLUMN ONE WAS THE STUDY AND COLUMN 2 WAS A FACTOR (LEVELS BEING hpv 6, hpv 11, coinfection, other). SUCH A DATA FRAME WOULD HAVE HAD 253 rows. Then I could have used table(column1,column2) and I could have got all this data as a table and the study name would be preserved. It is not that big a deal that I have to look elsewhere to find the study name but it seems silly that I cannot analyze data that is not in the raw state. I am sure there is a way. I just do not know it. On 10/3/07, Rolf Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think that what you need to do is > > as.table(as.matrix(dff)) > > E.g. > > melvin <- data.frame(x=c(3,1,3,2),y=c(3,3,4,5)) > clyde <- as.table(as.matrix(melvin)) > prop.table(clyde,1) > > x y > A 0.5000000 0.5000000 > B 0.2500000 0.7500000 > C 0.4285714 0.5714286 > D 0.2857143 0.7142857 > > HTH. > > cheers, > > Rolf Turner > > ###################################################################### > Attention: > This e-mail message is privileged and confidential. If you are not the > intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. > Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author. > > This e-mail has been scanned and cleared by MailMarshal > www.marshalsoftware.com > ###################################################################### > -- Farrel Buchinsky GrandCentral Tel: (412) 567-7870 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.