Changing variable output name in glm

July 20, 2023

I have built a function f that runs an anova given an x and y variable. I used NSE to make the function easier to use. Here is an example that is replicable and isolates the problem:

library(carData)

df <- carData::Salaries


f <- function(x,y, data){
  x <- ensym(x)
  y <- ensym(y)
  m <- aov(glm(data[[y]] ~  data[[x]], family='gaussian',data=data))
  print(summary(m))
}

output:

> f(rank, salary, df )
             Df    Sum Sq   Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)    
data[[x]]     2 1.432e+11 7.162e+10   128.2 <2e-16 ***
Residuals   394 2.201e+11 5.586e+08                   
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

The function works, great! But the output shows the variable name as data[[x]]. I would like to change this variable name that matches the input.

I have converted x to a character like:

x_string <- as.character(x)

But I don’t know where in glm I can change the variable name.

Thanks for any advice!

>Solution :

You could shorten your user defined function a bit and use substitute(y ~ x):

f <- function(x, y, data){
  m <- aov(glm(substitute(y ~  x), family = 'gaussian', data = data))
  summary(m)
}

f(rank, salary, df)

#              Df    Sum Sq   Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)    
# rank          2 1.432e+11 7.162e+10   128.2 <2e-16 ***
# Residuals   394 2.201e+11 5.586e+08                   
# ---
# Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1