[R] Creating NA equivalent

[Bert Gunter]

But you appear to be missing something, Jim -- see inline below (and
the original post):

Bert


On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 2:00 PM Jim Lemon <drjimlemon using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Please pardon a comment that may be off-target as well as off-topic.
> This appears similar to a number of things like fuzzy logic, where an
> instance can take incompatible truth values.
>
> It is known that an instance may have an attribute with a numeric
> value, but that value cannot be determined.
Yes, but **something** about the value is known: that it is > an upper
value or < a lower value. Such information should be used
(censoring!), not characterized as completely unknown. Think about it
in terms of survival time: saying that a person lasted longer than k
months is much more informative than saying that how long they lasted
is completely unknown!

>
> It seems to me that an appropriate designation for the value is Unk,
> perhaps with an associated probability of determination to distinguish
> it from NA (it is definitely not known).
>
> Jim
>
> On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 6:55 AM Avi Gross via R-help
> <r-help using r-project.org> wrote:
> >
> > I wonder if the package Adrian Dușa created might be helpful or point you along the way.
> >
> > It was eventually named "declared"
> >
> > https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/declared/index.html
> >
> > With a vignette here:
> >
> > https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/declared/vignettes/declared.pdf
> >
> > I do not know if it would easily satisfy your needs but it may be a step along the way. A package called Haven was part of the motivation and Adrian wanted a way to import data from external sources that had more than one category of NA that sounds a bit like what you want. His functions should allow the creation of such data within R, as well. I am including him in this email if you want to contact him or he has something to say.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: R-help <r-help-bounces using r-project.org> On Behalf Of Duncan Murdoch
> > Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2021 5:26 AM
> > To: Marc Girondot <marc_grt using yahoo.fr>; r-help using r-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [R] Creating NA equivalent
> >
> > On 20/12/2021 11:41 p.m., Marc Girondot via R-help wrote:
> > > Dear members,
> > >
> > > I work about dosage and some values are bellow the detection limit. I
> > > would like create new "numbers" like LDL (to represent lower than
> > > detection limit) and UDL (upper the detection limit) that behave like
> > > NA, with the possibility to test them using for example is.LDL() or
> > > is.UDL().
> > >
> > > Note that NA is not the same than LDL or UDL: NA represent missing data.
> > > Here the data is available as LDL or UDL.
> > >
> > > NA is built in R language very deep... any option to create new
> > > version of NA-equivalent ?
> > >
> >
> > There was a discussion of this back in May.  Here's a link to one approach that I suggested:
> >
> >    https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2021-May/080776.html
> >
> > Read the followup messages, I made at least one suggested improvement.
> > I don't know if anyone has packaged this, but there's a later version of the code here:
> >
> >    https://stackoverflow.com/a/69179441/2554330
> >
> > Duncan Murdoch
> >
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> >
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>
> ______________________________________________
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