On 24/10/15 21:10, Jim Lemon wrote:
Hi Ming,
In fact, the notation lb/1000 is correct, as the values represent the
weight of the cars in pounds (lb) divided by 1000. I am not sure why this
particular transformation of the measured values was used, but I'm sure it
has caused confusion previously.
I disagree --- and agree with Ming. The notation is incorrect. Surely
"lb/1000" means thousandths of pounds. E.g. 12345 lb/1000 is equal to
12.345 lb.
I'm sure that others will come up with all sorts of convoluted lawyerish
arguments that the case is otherwise, but as far as I am concerned, any
*sane* person would interpret "lb/1000" to mean thousandths of pounds.
If in the unlikely event that the documentation for some data set said
"Weight (gm/1000)", I'm pretty sure that this would be interpreted to
mean milligrams and *not* kilograms!
Since the description of the data was presumably taken from that given
in the original source ("Motor Trend" magazine) it would probably be
inappropriate to "correct" it. However a note/warning should be added
to the mtcars help file indicating that Motor Trend got things upside-down.
cheers,
Rolf
--
Technical Editor ANZJS
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276
On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Ming-Lun Ho <ming...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I used "?mtcars" to read the documentation for the dataset. I found a
mistake in how unit is listed, namely, that for the variable "wt," the unit
should be listed as "1000 lb," not "lb/1000." However, I don't know whom to
contact exactly for the correction. Please point me to the right place.
Thanks.
--Ming
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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.
