> summary(plants)
Scientific_Name Duration Active_Growth_Period Foliage_Color pH_Min pH_Max
Length:5166 Length:5166 Length:5166 Length:5166 Min. :3.000 Min. : 5.100
Class :character Class :character Class :character Class :character 1st Qu.:4.500 1st Qu.: 7.000
Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character Median :5.000 Median : 7.300
Mean :4.997 Mean : 7.344
3rd Qu.:5.500 3rd Qu.: 7.800
Max. :7.000 Max. :10.000
NA's :4327 NA's :4327
Precip_Min Precip_Max Shade_Tolerance Temp_Min_F
Min. : 4.00 Min. : 16.00 Length:5166 Min. :-79.00
1st Qu.:16.75 1st Qu.: 55.00 Class :character 1st Qu.:-38.00
Median :28.00 Median : 60.00 Mode :character Median :-33.00
Mean :25.57 Mean : 58.73 Mean :-22.53
3rd Qu.:32.00 3rd Qu.: 60.00 3rd Qu.:-18.00
Max. :60.00 Max. :200.00 Max. : 52.00
NA's :4338 NA's :4338 NA's :4328
| You nailed it! Good job!
|============================================================================= | 68%
| summary() provides different output for each variable, depending on its class. For numeric data such as Precip_Min,
| summary() displays the minimum, 1st quartile, median, mean, 3rd quartile, and maximum. These values help us understand
| how the data are distributed.
...
|================================================================================= | 72%
| For categorical variables (called 'factor' variables in R), summary() displays the number of times each value (or
| 'level') occurs in the data. For example, each value of Scientific_Name only appears once, since it is unique to a
| specific plant. In contrast, the summary for Duration (also a factor variable) tells us that our dataset contains 3031
| Perennial plants, 682 Annual plants, etc.
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...
|====================================================================================== | 76%
| You can see that R truncated the summary for Active_Growth_Period by including a catch-all category called 'Other'.
| Since it is a categorical/factor variable, we can see how many times each value actually occurs in the data with
| table(plants$Active_Growth_Period).
