Question

So I have a really, really big array. When I run a summary(var) on it, how can I see more than what’s listed, ie expanding out the (Other) bit? Here’s an example output:

"            var                         "
""  "foo1        :5908364  "
""  "foot        :1419481  "
""  "foop        :1214379  "
""  "billy       : 833016  "
""  "blah blah   : 517618  "
""  "asdfasdf    :  24668  "
""  "(Other)     :  82474  "

I want to display more, if not all, of the non-listed items that are bundled under (Other). Is there an option to use on summary() to list more than that number of items?

Answer 1

I doubt that var is an array, it looks more likely to be a data.frame with a factor column.

You are looking for the maxsum argument of summary.factor and /or summary.data.frame.

summary(var, maxsum = 50)

Or whatever your want to set it at.

You could also use table to return similar information (which is what summary.factor is doing under-the-hood)

Assuming that var is a factor column in a data.frame

DF <- data.frame(var = rep(letters[1:10],1:10))


summary(DF)

      var    
 j      :10  
 i      : 9  
 h      : 8  
 g      : 7  
 f      : 6  
 e      : 5  
 (Other):10  

# over estimating the number required  
summary(DF, maxsum = 20)
 var   
 a: 1  
 b: 2  
 c: 3  
 d: 4  
 e: 5  
 f: 6  
 g: 7  
 h: 8  
 i: 9  
 j:10  

 # using table
 table(DF$var)


 a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j 
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10