centrality_description: Data frame and expression for distribution properties

In statsExpressions: Tidy Dataframes and Expressions with Statistical Details

Data frame and expression for distribution properties

Description

Parametric, non-parametric, robust, and Bayesian measures of centrality.

Usage

centrality_description(
  data,
  x,
  y,
  type = "parametric",
  conf.level = 0.95,
  tr = 0.2,
  digits = 2L,
  ...
)

Arguments

data	A data frame (or a tibble) from which variables specified are to be taken. Other data types (e.g., matrix, table, array, etc.) will not be accepted. Additionally, grouped data frames from {dplyr} should be ungrouped before they are entered as data.
x	The grouping (or independent) variable in data.
y	The response (or outcome or dependent) variable from data.
type	A character specifying the type of statistical approach: "parametric" "nonparametric" "robust" "bayes" You can specify just the initial letter (e.g. "np" or "bf"). Matching is on the initial lowercase letter only, so any other value (including capitalized values such as "Bayes") falls back to "parametric" without a warning.
conf.level	Scalar between 0 and 1 (default: ⁠95%⁠ confidence/credible intervals, 0.95).
tr	Trim level for the mean when carrying out robust tests. In case of an error, try reducing the value of tr, which is by default set to 0.2. Lowering the value might help.
digits	Number of digits for rounding or significant figures. May also be "signif" to return significant figures or "scientific" to return scientific notation. Control the number of digits by adding the value as suffix, e.g. digits = "scientific4" to have scientific notation with 4 decimal places, or digits = "signif5" for 5 significant figures (see also signif()).
...	Currently ignored.

Details

This function describes a distribution for y variable for each level of the grouping variable in x by a set of indices (e.g., measures of centrality, dispersion, range, skewness, kurtosis, etc.). It additionally returns an expression containing a specified centrality measure. The function internally relies on datawizard::describe_distribution() function.

Value

The returned object is a tibble data frame with the additional class "statsExpressions". Unlike the hypothesis-testing functions, this one returns one row per level of the grouping variable x, describing the distribution of y within that level. The columns are:

• the grouping variable (named after x, e.g. Species)

• the requested centrality estimate (named after y, e.g. Sepal.Length): the mean (type = "parametric"), median ("nonparametric"), trimmed mean ("robust"), or MAP estimate ("bayes")

• std.dev: standard deviation (for "parametric" and "robust")

• mad: median absolute deviation (for "nonparametric")

• iqr: interquartile range

• conf.low, conf.high: bounds of the confidence/credible interval for the centrality estimate

• min, max: minimum and maximum values

• skewness, kurtosis: shape statistics of the distribution

• n.obs: number of non-missing observations

• missing.obs: number of missing observations

• expression: a list-column of pre-formatted plotmath expressions (each element is a language object, not a character string) containing the centrality estimate, ready to be used in {ggplot2}

• n.expression: a label combining the group name and its sample size (e.g. "setosa\n(n = 50)"), useful as an axis or facet label

The exact dispersion column depends on the type of analysis (std.dev vs mad; neither is returned for "bayes"), and datawizard::describe_distribution() is used internally to compute these indices.

For more examples, see the data frame output vignette and the Return value schema article.

Centrality measures

The table below provides summary about:

• statistical test carried out for inferential statistics

• type of effect size estimate and a measure of uncertainty for this estimate

• functions used internally to compute these details

Type	Measure	Function used
Parametric	mean	datawizard::describe_distribution()
Non-parametric	median	datawizard::describe_distribution()
Robust	trimmed mean	datawizard::describe_distribution()
Bayesian	MAP	datawizard::describe_distribution()

Citation

Patil, I., (2021). statsExpressions: R Package for Tidy Dataframes and Expressions with Statistical Details. Journal of Open Source Software, 6(61), 3236, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03236

Examples

# for reproducibility
set.seed(123)

# ----------------------- parametric -----------------------

centrality_description(iris, Species, Sepal.Length, type = "parametric")

# ----------------------- non-parametric -------------------

centrality_description(mtcars, am, wt, type = "nonparametric")

# ----------------------- robust ---------------------------

centrality_description(ToothGrowth, supp, len, type = "robust")

# ----------------------- Bayesian -------------------------

centrality_description(sleep, group, extra, type = "bayes")

statsExpressions documentation built on Oct. 9, 2026, 5:06 p.m.