Actually, the dissonance is a bit more basic. After xxx(...., na.rm=TRUE) with all NA's in ... you have numeric(0). So what you see is actually:
> z <- numeric(0) > mean(z) [1] NaN > median(z) [1] NA > sd(z) [1] NA > sum(z) [1] 0 etc. I imagine that there may be more of these little inconsistencies due to the organic way R evolved over time. What the conventions should be can be purely a matter of personal opinion in the absence of accepted standards. But I would look to see what accepted standards were, if any, first. -- Bert On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 7:34 AM Ivan Calandra <calan...@rgzm.de> wrote: > Dear useRs, > > I have just noticed that when input is only NA with na.rm=TRUE, mean() > results in NaN, whereas median() and sd() produce NA. Shouldn't it all > be the same? I think NA makes more sense than NaN in that case. > > x <- c(NA, NA, NA) mean(x, na.rm=TRUE) [1] NaN median(x, na.rm=TRUE) [1] > NAsd(x, na.rm=TRUE) [1] NA > > Thanks for any feedback. > > Best, > Ivan > > -- > Dr. Ivan Calandra > TraCEr, laboratory for Traceology and Controlled Experiments > MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and > Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution > Schloss Monrepos > 56567 Neuwied, Germany > +49 (0) 2631 9772-243 > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ivan_Calandra > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.