Modern R Programming Cookbook

How to do it…

Let's give a name to the function that you are going to write here, desStat, and define its action as follows:

    desStat <- function(numVec, type="classical"){      if(!is.numeric(numVec))       stop("The input must be numeric")      average <- mean(numVec, na.rm = T)      std <- sd(numVec, na.rm = T)      med <- median(numVec, na.rm = T)      mad <- mad(numVec, na.rm = T)      descriptiveStats <- setClass("descriptiveStats",         slots=list(centre="numeric",          spread="numeric"))      if(type=="classical")        return(new("descriptiveStats", centre=average, spread=std))          if(type=="robust")             return(new("descriptiveStats", centre=med, spread=mad))        }     desStat(x)    An object of class "descriptiveStats"    Slot "centre":    [1] 19.8    Slot "spread":    [1] 5.256677