r - How to find mean time of list of 24hr format time?

Question

I have a list of time in 24hr format like:

times <- c(23.9, 0.5, 22.7, 0.1, 23.3, 1.2, 23.6)

I'm trying to find the mean of times... I can't seem to find a way and the mean() function is giving wrong answer.

This is what I tried:

mean(times)

How can I get the correct mean of times?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65903391/how-to-find-mean-time-of-list-of-24hr-format-time

Answer 1

The clock has a circular scale, which ends where it begins, so you need to use circular statistics

install.packages("psych")
library(psych)
circadian.mean(bed.times) # This will give the correct mean