WHAT HAPPENED? WHERE IS epicalc?

‘epicalc’ has disappeared from CRAN. It has been archived by R-core team based on my request. The
reason is that CRAN has set up a policy not to allow any package to do anything on .GlobalEnv while
epicalc does that extensively.

While not readily available on CRAN for normal Windows users, ‘epicalc’ is still installable from our
website.

On R console, type:

> install.packages("epicalc", repos = "http://medipe.psu.ac.th/epicalc")

Then it is ready for

> library(epicalc)

INTRODUCTION TO ‘epiDisplay’

There are many non-database functions of epicalc, such as:

 ‘codebook’, ‘des’, ‘summ’,

 ‘tab1’, ‘tabpct’, ‘dotplot’, ‘pyramid’, ‘followup.plot’, ‘aggregate.plot’,
 ‘cc’, ‘cs’, ‘mhor’
 ‘n.for.survey’, ‘n.for.2p’ ….,
 ‘tableStack’,
 ‘logistic.display’,
 alphaBest.

While ‘epicalc’ is not on CRAN, these functions are available on CRAN in the new ‘epiDisplay’
package.

On the menu bar of R console, click ‘Packages’ and choose ‘install package(s)…’. Choose the mirror
site and choose ‘epiDisplay’.

After successful installation, it is ready for

> library(epiDisplay)

Under epiDisplay, the database functions are not available such as

 ‘zap’
 ‘use’
 ‘recode’
 ‘rename’
 ‘label.var’
 ‘pack’
 ‘unclassDataframe’
  ‘keepData’
 ‘sortBy’

WHICH ONE IS BETTER? ‘epicalc’ or ‘epiDisplay’

For those who are familiar with epicalc, without these database functions, you need to get back to
usual plain R functions. That will slow you down substantially, especially during the data cleaning
and manipulation. I recommend that you should install epicalc from our website (as shown above)
and don’t borther about ‘epiDisplay’

For R users who have never used epicalc and do not want to learn epicalc database functions,
‘epiDisplay’ is straightforward and should still be very useful in data exploration and result display.

CHEERS!

Virasakdi Chongsuvivatwong

Epidemiology Unit, Prince of Songkla University

Thailand 90110

Email : cvirasak@medicine.psu.ac.th

2015-07-02