how do I generate an ordered list of vectors in R?

Question

In my data I have a list of made-up words and their rating by 30 individuals on a scale 1-5.

I have assigned the mean value of the word's rating to individual vectors as follows

dox.mean = c(mean(doxrating))
noi.mean = c(mean(noirating)) 
wostaro.mean = c(mean(wostaro$rating))

Now I want to use R to generate a list of the vectors in descending order.

When I try

sort(dox.mean, noi.mean, wostaro.mean),

it returns the error message:

Error in sort(dox.mean, noi.mean, daishu.mean) : 'decreasing' must be a length-1 logical vector.

Did you intend to set 'partial'?

when I use order(dox.mean, noi.mean, wostaro.mean) it just returns: [1] 1.

How can I generate this list? I am a bit of a novice so simple terms would help!

Answer 1

Sort function in R deals with vectors.

For instance, x <- c(1,2,3,4), sort(x) or sort(c(1,2,3,4)) generates the same right results. But for sorting a data.frame, you have to go one extra step:

1. Let's say your data frame has a name mydata: get a vector for the column by which you want sort your data frame; In your case, it can be like this:

   sort_dox <- sort(mydata$dox.mean), sort_noi <- sort(mydata$noi.mean), sort_wos <- sort(mydata$wostaro.mean)
   

2. use subset to get your sorted results:

   mydata[c(sort_dox, sort_noi, sort_wos)]
   

3. You can add T or F to chose descending or ascending sorting method.