change {quest}

Change Score from a Numeric Vector

Description

change creates a change score (aka difference score) from a numeric vector. It is assumed that the vector is already sorted by time such that the first element is earliest in time and the last element is the latest in time.

Usage

change(x, n, undefined = NA)

Arguments

x

numeric vector.

n

integer vector with length 1. Specifies how the change score is calculated. If n is positive, then the change score is calculated from lead - original; if n is negative, then the change score is calculated from original - lag. The magnitude of n determines how many elements are shifted for the lead/lag within the calculation. If n is zero, then change simply returns a vector or zeros. See details of shift.

undefined

atomic vector with length 1 (probably makes sense to be the same typeof as x). Specifies what to insert for undefined values after the shifting takes place. See details of shift.

Details

It is recommended to use L when specifying n to prevent problems with floating point numbers. shift tries to circumvent this issue by a call to round within shift if n is not an integer; however that is not a complete fail safe. The problem is that as.integer(n) implicit in shift truncates rather than rounds. See details of shift.

Value

an atomic vector of the same length as x that is the change score. If x and undefined are different typeofs, then the return will be coerced to the most complex typeof (i.e., complex to simple: character, double, integer, logical).

See Also

changes change_by changes_by shift

Examples

change(x = attitude[[1]], n = -1L) # use L to prevent problems with floating point numbers
change(x = attitude[[1]], n = -2L) # can specify any integer up to the length of `x`
change(x = attitude[[1]], n = +1L) # can specify negative or positive integers
change(x = attitude[[1]], n = +2L, undefined = -999) # user-specified indefined value
change(x = attitude[[1]], n = -2L, undefined = -999) # user-specified indefined value
change(x = attitude[[1]], n = 0L) # returns a vector of zeros
## Not run: 
change(x = setNames(object = letters, nm = LETTERS), n = 3L) # character vector returns an error

## End(Not run)