\name{analysePlate}
\alias{analysePlate}
\title{Apply a statistic to the data from each well in a plate}
\description{Apply a statistic to the data from each well in a plate}
\usage{
analysePlate(x, wellcol="well", wellrange, statfun, platename, plotdir=".", ...)
}
\arguments{
  \item{x}{data frame. It must contain a column whose name is the value
    of \code{wellcol}, and further columns that are needed by the function
    named by \code{stat}.}
  \item{wellcol}{character of length 1. Name of a column in \code{x} that
    contains the well ID.}
  \item{wellrange}{vector of the same type as \code{x[, wellcol]}. All
    values \code{x[, wellcol]} must be contained in \code{wellrange}.}
  \item{statfun}{character of length 1. Name of a function that can calculate
    a statistic from selected rows of \code{x}.}
  \item{platename}{character of length 1. The name or ID of this plate, which
  will be used for graphics output filenames and as the value of the column
  \code{platename} of the return value.}
  \item{plotdir}{character of length 1. The name of directory where
    diagnostic plots will be saved.}
  \item{...}{further arguments that are passed on to \code{statfun}.}
}

\details{The semantics of this function are similar to
\code{\link[base:tapply]{tapply}}, but some additional checking and 
reporting is performed, and the return value is a data frame.}

\value{A data frame with number of rows equal to
  \code{length(wellrange)}. Rows (wells) for which there is no data
  contains \code{NA}s. The columns comprise \code{platename},
  \code{well-ID} (from \code{x[, wellcol]}), and the
  results from statfun.}

\author{Wolfgang Huber}
\keyword{manip}
\examples{##see vignette}