I'm trying to use tapply to output means and SD or SE for my data but seem to be limited by how many times I can subset it. Here's a snippet of my data
> stems353[1:10,] Time DataSource Plot Elevation Aspect Slope Type Species SizeClass Stems 1 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Conifer ABCO Class1 3 2 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Conifer ABMA Class1 0 3 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Hardwood ACMA Class1 0 4 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Hardwood AECA Class1 0 5 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Hardwood ARME Class1 0 6 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Conifer CADE Class1 15 7 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Hardwood CELE Class1 0 8 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Hardwood CONU Class1 0 9 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Conifer JUCA Class1 0 10 Modern Cameron 70F221 1730 ESE 20 Conifer JUOC Class1 0 I'd like to see means/SD of "Stems" stratified by "Species", "Time" and "SizeClass". I can get R to give me this for means by species: > tapply(stems353$Stems, stems353$Species, mean) ABCO ABMA ACMA AECA ARME CADE CELE 0.7305240793 0.8569405099 0.0003541076 0.0010623229 0.0017705382 0.4684844193 0.0063739377 CONU JUCA JUOC LIDE PIAL PICO PIJE 0.0017705382 0.0003541076 0.0959631728 0.0138101983 0.3905807365 1.5651558074 0.2315864023 PILA PIMO PIMO2 PIPO PISA POTR PSME 0.1774079320 0.1880311615 0.0311614731 0.6735127479 0.0237252125 0.0506373938 0.2000708215 QUCH QUDO QUDU QUKE QULO QUWI Salix 0.0474504249 0.1203966006 0.0000000000 0.2071529745 0.0003541076 0.0548866856 0.0003541076 SEGI TSME 0.0021246459 0.5017705382 > but I really need to see each species by SizeClass and Time so that each value would be labeled something like "ABCOSizeClass1TimeModern". Adding 2 variables to the function doesn't seem to work > tapply(stems353$Stems, stems353$Species, stems353$SizeClass, stems353$Time, mean) Error in match.fun(FUN) : 'stems353$SizeClass' is not a function, character or symbol I've already created proper subsets for each of these groups, e.g. one subset is called "stems353ABCO1" and I can run analyses on this. But, trying to extract means straight from those subsets doesn't seem to work > mean(stems353ABCO1) [1] NA Warning message: In mean.default(stems353ABCO1) : argument is not numeric or logical: returning NA > Thanks, Chris Dolanc -- Christopher R. Dolanc PhD Candidate Ecology Graduate Group University of California, Davis Lab Phone: (530) 752-2644 (Barbour lab) [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.