# How can I solve error UndefVarError while I was using describe for DataFrames

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** dataframes\
**Created:** [July 29, 2019, 6:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925 "2019-07-29T06:40:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Manu\_Francis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/manu_francis/32/10010_2.png) [@Manu\_Francis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Manu_Francis)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925/1 "2019-07-29T06:40:50Z")

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Hi,

I am trying to use describe() function for DataFrame like `describe(data)`. But I am getting error “UndefVarError: describe not defined”. What is the reason? I am using Atom with julia version 1.1.0.  
I am new to Julia, so can anyone help me to solve this error?

Regards,  
Manu

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bkamins](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/bkamins/32/208538_2.png) [@bkamins](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/bkamins)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 8:32am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925/2 "2019-07-29T08:32:04Z")

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What is the result of running the following commands:

```julia
using Pkg
Pkg.status()

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Manu\_Francis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/manu_francis/32/10010_2.png) [@Manu\_Francis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Manu_Francis)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 5:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925/3 "2019-07-30T05:27:45Z")

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Hi,  
I am getting the results like this.

```julia
 [c52e3926] Atom v0.8.8
  [336ed68f] CSV v0.5.9
  [a93c6f00] DataFrames v0.19.1
  [31c24e10] Distributions v0.21.0
  [38e38edf] GLM v1.1.1
  [28b8d3ca] GR v0.38.1
  [c91e804a] Gadfly v1.0.1
  [09f84164] HypothesisTests v0.8.0
  [7073ff75] IJulia v1.18.1
  [e5e0dc1b] Juno v0.7.0
  [f0f68f2c] PlotlyJS v0.12.3
  [91a5bcdd] Plots v0.23.1
  [438e738f] PyCall v1.91.2
  [d330b81b] PyPlot v2.8.0
  [3646fa90] ScikitLearn v0.5.1
  [60ddc479] StatPlots v0.9.2
  [2913bbd2] StatsBase v0.31.0
  [f3b207a7] StatsPlots v0.10.2
  [fce5fe82] Turing v0.6.11
  [b8865327] UnicodePlots v1.1.0

```

Thanks and Regards,  
Manu

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bkamins](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/bkamins/32/208538_2.png) [@bkamins](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/bkamins)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 7:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925/4 "2019-07-30T07:37:35Z")

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So the problem is you did the following thing:

```julia
julia> using StatsBase

julia> using DataFrames

julia> describe
WARNING: both DataFrames and StatsBase export "describe"; uses of it in module Main must be qualified
ERROR: UndefVarError: describe not defined

```

(note the warning you get above an error)

The problem is that StatsBase.jl defines `describe` as well as DataFrames.jl. This is already fixed on StatsBase.jl master, but the release has not been tagged yet.

So in short - very soon it will be working again. For now you need to write `DataFrames.describe(df)` to disambiguate.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Manu\_Francis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/manu_francis/32/10010_2.png) [@Manu\_Francis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Manu_Francis)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 7:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-solve-error-undefvarerror-while-i-was-using-describe-for-dataframes/26925/5 "2019-07-30T07:41:45Z")

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@bkamins : thanks for your wonderful support