[R] what does cut(data, breaks=n) actually do?

[Peter Dalgaard]

melissa cline wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to bin a quantity into 2-3 bins for calculating entropy and
> mutual information.  One of the approaches I'm exploring is the cut()
> function, which is what the mutualInfo function in binDist uses.  When it's
> called in the format cut(data, breaks=n), it somehow splits the data into n
> distinct bins.  Can anyone tell me how cut() decides where to cut?
>
>   
This is one case where reading the actual R code is easier that 
explaining what it does.  From cut.default

    if (length(breaks) == 1) {
        if (is.na(breaks) | breaks < 2)
            stop("invalid number of intervals")
        nb <- as.integer(breaks + 1)
        dx <- diff(rx <- range(x, na.rm = TRUE))
        if (dx == 0)
            dx <- rx[1]
        breaks <- seq.int(rx[1] - dx/1000, rx[2] + dx/1000, length.out = nb)
    }

so basically it takes the range, extends it a bit and splits in into 
<breaks> equally long segments.

(For the sometimes more attractive option of splitting into groups of 
roughly equal size, there is cut2 in the Hmisc package, or use quantile())

-- 
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