Home/ Questions/Simple solutions for the no non-missing arguments to min; returning inf error
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Keanu Thomas
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Asked: 2022-05-18T17:17:48+00:00 In:

Simple solutions for the no non-missing arguments to min; returning inf error

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I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I’ve already lost a couple of days struggling with this. Here is my command line:

data(iris)
 
 library(reshape2)
 
 molten.iris <- melt(iris,id.var="Species")
 summary(molten.iris)
 str(molten.iris)
 #------------------------------------------------------------
 # Both return warning:
 dcast(data=molten.iris,Species~variable,value.var="value",fun.aggregate=min)
 dcast(data=molten.iris,Species~variable,value.var="value",fun.aggregate=max)
 
 # Length looks fine though
 dcast(data=molten.iris,Species~variable,value.var="value",fun.aggregate=length)
 
 #------------------------------------------------------------
 # No warning messages here:
 aggregate(value ~ Species + variable, FUN=min, data=molten.iris)
 aggregate(value ~ Species + variable, FUN=max, data=molten.iris)
 #------------------------------------------------------------
 # Or here:
 library(plyr)
 
 ddply(molten.iris,c("Species","variable"),function(df){
  data.frame(
  "min"=min(df$value),
  "max"=max(df$value)
  )
 })
 #------------------------------------------------------------

This returns:

Warning message:
In .fun(.value[0], ...) : no non-missing arguments to min; returning Inf

I don’t have any experience with the “no non-missing arguments to min; returning inf.” In this case, how should I change?

returning inf
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1 Answer

  1. Best Answer
    Expert

    The cause: This warning appears because the min/max operators are used on a numeric of length 0.

    The warning is reproduced by:

    min(numeric(0))
[1] Inf
Warning message:
In min(numeric(0)) : no non-missing arguments to min; returning Inf

    For mean you don’t get the warning :

    mean(numeric(0))
[1] NaN

    The solution: It’s only a warning that has no bearing on the calculation. So you can using suppressWarnings to suppress it:

    suppressWarnings(dcast(data=molten.iris,
                 Species~variable,value.var="value",
                 fun.aggregate=min))
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