[R] Reading Numeric Data -- Trivial Question

[Uwe Ligges]

Alex K wrote:

> Hello,
> 
>    I am very new to R, and this is certainly and uber-newby question:
> 
>    I am trying to read a vector of numeric data that contains the log
> of daily DJI returns and simply plot a histogram of it.
> 
>    The data I have is in a text file format, on each line a number
> represents the log of the returns of one day.
> 
>    I have problems in reading this in a vector numeric format.
> 
> If I try
> 
> retr<- as.numeric(read.table("logDJI.TXT", header=FALSE, sep="", dec="." )); 


read.table() returns a data.frame, as the docs point out, but as.numeric 
expects a vector.

Either extract the first (and only?) column or read the data using 
scan(), if there is really only one column.

Uwe Ligges


> I get:
> " Error in as.double.default(read.table("logDJIm.TXT", header = FALSE,
> sep = "",  :
>         (list) object cannot be coerced to 'double'"
> 
> and when I try to plot:
> 
>  plot(density(retr, width=.004), type="l", xlab="y", ylab="pdf");
> 
> I get:
> 
> "Error in density(retr, width = 0.004) : argument 'x' must be numeric"
> 
>   If I try:
> 
> retr<- as.data.frame(read.table("logDJI.TXT", header=FALSE, sep="", dec="." )); 
> 
> I get no reading or conversion error, but I get the same error when I
> try to plot as above.
> 
> Can anyone help with this?
> 
> Thank you in advance,
> Alex
> 
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