[R] Discriminant function analysis
tyler
tyler.smith at mail.mcgill.ca
Thu Feb 7 16:16:15 CET 2008
On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 02:36:58PM +0000, Gavin Simpson wrote:
>
> But I'm not sure this matters much. If you use the formula interface to
> lda(), factors get expanded to the dummy variables Tyler is talking
> about. But of course, a factor with two levels 0/1 doesn't need much
> manipulation as you only need a single dummy variable to represent its
> two states:
>
Thanks, Gavin!
R's formula interface if very powerful, and I'm just starting to
understand how to take full advantage of it.
> You might want to standardise your exp variables to zero mean and unit
> variance prior to doing the lda so that all variables carry the same
> weight, if you have mixtures of numeric (continuous) variables and
> binary ones.
This is the part I was unsure of. If you have a categorical
explanatory variable with five levels, you can turn it into four dummy
variables, which you then standardize. Does the original variable end
up getting four times the weight of a single numerical variable?
Cheers,
Tyler
--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
--Mark Twain
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