To determine the age of an abalone, one has to cut the shell through the cone, stain it and count the number of rings through a microscope. This is a time consuming task, and hence the age is often predicted from measurements that are more easily obtained.

The dataset in the file Abalone.csv is an example of such a dataset. You find the following variables:

 

• gender: the gender, with M = male, F = female and I = infant
• length: longest shell measurement
• diameter: perpendicular to length
• height: with meat in shell
• whole weight: whole abalone
• shucked weight: weight of the meat
• gut weight: weight of the gut
• shell weight: weight of the cell
• ring: The number of rings. Add 1.5 for the age in years

 

Read the abalone dataset in and call it abalone (You can assume that the external file is located in the working directory).