an error occurred because rows do not match when trying to use lm to perform an ANOVA test

Question

I have dataset like this:

LA NY MA
1 2 3
4 5 6
3 5
4

I am trying to use lm to perform an ANOVA test (to decide whether the mean number is the same in each state), and it keeps showing "an error occurred" because rows do not match. How can I fix this issue?

Answer 1

Maybe you could do something like this. To read the data, use the fill argument in read.table. Where text = txt, you would put your file name there.

(dat <- read.table(text = txt, header = TRUE, fill = TRUE))
#   LA NY MA
# 1  1  2  3
# 2  4  5  6
# 3  3  5 NA
# 4  4 NA NA

Then we can take the column means and create a new two column data frame.

cm <- colMeans(dat, na.rm = TRUE)
data.frame(state = names(cm), mean = unname(cm))
#   state mean
# 1    LA  3.0
# 2    NY  4.0
# 3    MA  4.5

where txt is

txt <- "LA NY MA
1 2 3
4 5 6
3 5
4"