R calculating mean of a column

Question

I want to calculate mean of a column in R. The column is written in a csv file, namely datafile, as follows.

X
12
14
10
...

I read the data as follows.

myData <- read.csv("datafile.csv")

When I want to calculate the mean as mean(myData), I get the following message:

[1] NA Warning message: In mean.default(myData) : argument is not numeric or logical: returning NA

It is better to conduct a simple Google search when trying to solve a problem (wonder how long this comment will last ) — David Arenburg, Aug 10 '15 at 14:22

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 10 '15 at 14:17

Welcome to SO.

A good place to start is to read the documentation, for mean with ?mean.

That said, you are probably looking for the colMeans function:

colMeans(myData,na.rm=T)

The na.rm=T doesn't take into account NA entries, which is what's likely causing the error.

1 Answers1