tFrame: Transpose a data frame

Description

Transposes a data frame, converting variables to cases and vice versa

Usage

tFrame(x)

Arguments

The data frame to be transposed.

Value

The transposed data frame

Details

The tFrame function is a convenience function that simply transposes the input data frame and coerces the result back to a data frame. Apart from a very small amount of exception handling, it is equivalent to as.data.frame(t(x)). It exists simply because I sometimes find it convenient when teaching statistics to discuss simple data handling before going into details regarding coercion; similarly, since I generally have students work with data frames before exposing them to matrices, it is convenient to have a transpose function that returns a data frame as output.

Naturally, the tFrame function should only be used when it is actually sensible to think of the cases of x as variables in their own right. In real life I expect that this maps almost perfectly onto those cases where x could be a matrix just as easily as a data frame, so I don't believe that tFrame is useful in real world data analysis. It is intended as a teaching tool.

Examples

Run this code

# Create a data frame that could sensibly be transposed...	
Gf <- c(105, 119, 121, 98)   # fluid intelligence for 4 people
Gc <- c(110, 115, 119, 103)  # crystallised intelligence 
Gs <- c(112, 102, 108, 99)   # speed of processing
dataset <- data.frame( Gf, Gc, Gs ) 
rownames(dataset) <- paste( "person", 1:4, sep="" )
print(dataset)
#            Gf  Gc  Gs
#   person1 105 110 112
#   person2 119 115 102
#   person3 121 119 108
#   person4  98 103  99	
#	

# Now transpose it...
tFrame( dataset )
#      person1 person2 person3 person4
#   Gf     105     119     121      98
#   Gc     110     115     119     103
#   Gs     112     102     108      99