Question

Completely new to R here. I ran R in SPSS to solve some complex polynomials from SPSS datasets. I managed to get the result from R back into SPSS, but it was a very inelegant process:

begin program R.
z  <- polyroot(unlist(spssdata.GetDataFromSPSS(variables=c("qE","qD","qC","qB","qA"),cases=1),use.names=FALSE))
otherVals <- spssdata.GetDataFromSPSS(variables=c("b0","b1","Lc","tInv","sR","c0","c1","N2","xBar","DVxSq"),cases=1)
b0<-unlist(otherVals["b0"],use.names=FALSE)
b1<-unlist(otherVals["b1"],use.names=FALSE)
Lc<-unlist(otherVals["Lc"],use.names=FALSE)
tInv<-unlist(otherVals["tInv"],use.names=FALSE)
sR<-unlist(otherVals["sR"],use.names=FALSE)
c0<-unlist(otherVals["c0"],use.names=FALSE)
c1<-unlist(otherVals["c1"],use.names=FALSE)
N2<-unlist(otherVals["N2"],use.names=FALSE)
xBar<-unlist(otherVals["xBar"],use.names=FALSE)
DVxSq<-unlist(otherVals["DVxSq"],use.names=FALSE)
z2 <- Re(z[abs(c(abs(b0+b1*Re(z)-tInv*sR*sqrt(1/(c0+c1*Re(z))^2+1/N2+(Re(z)-xBar)^2/DVxSq))-Lc))==min(abs(c(abs(b0+b1*Re(z)-tInv*sR*sqrt(1/(c0+c1*Re(z))^2+1/N2+(Re(z)-xBar)^2/DVxSq))-Lc)))])
varSpec1 <- c("Xd","Xd",0,"F8","scale")
dict <- spssdictionary.CreateSPSSDictionary(varSpec1)
spssdictionary.SetDictionaryToSPSS("results", dict)
new = data.frame(z2)
spssdata.SetDataToSPSS("results", new)
spssdictionary.EndDataStep( )
end program.

Honestly, it was mostly pieced together from somewhat-related examples and seems more complicated than it should be. I had to take the new dataset created by R and run MATCH FILES with my original dataset. All I want to do is a) pull numbers from SPSS into R, b) manipulate them-in this case, finding a polyroot that fit certain criteria- , and c) put the results right back into the SPSS dataset without messing up any of the previous data.

Am I missing something that would make this more simple? Keep in mind that I have zero R experience outside of this attempt, but I have decent experience in programming SPSS and matlab.

Thanks in advance for any help you give!

Answer 1

R in SPSS can create new SPSS datasets, but it can’t modify an existing one. There are a lot of situations where the data from R would be dimensionally inconsistent with the active SPSS dataset. So you need to create a dictionary and data frame using the apis above and then do whatever is appropriate on the SPSS side if you need to match back. You might want to submit an enhancement request for SPSS at [e-mail]