School of Economics and Management
Beihang University
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subset() function and the use of [ and $dplyr package is designed to mitigate a lot of complex operations for data frames.dplyr Packagedplyr does could already be done with base R, but it greatly simplifies existing functionality in R.dplyr functions are very fast, as many key operations are coded in C++.dplyr GrammarSome of the key "verbs" provided by the dplyr package are
select: return a subset of the columns of a data frame, using a flexible notationfilter: extract a subset of rows from a data frame based on logical conditionsarrange: reorder rows of a data framerename: rename variables in a data framemutate: add new variables/columns or transform existing variablessummarise / summarize: generate summary statistics of different variables in the data frame, possibly within strata%>%: the "pipe" operator is used to connect multiple verb actions together into a pipelinedplyr Function PropertiesAll of the functions have a few common characteristics. In particular,
The first argument is a data frame.
The subsequent arguments describe what to do with the data frame specified in the first argument, and you can refer to columns in the data frame directly without using the $ operator (just use the column names).
The return result of a function is a new data frame.
Data frames must be properly formatted and annotated for this to all be useful. In particular, the data must be tidy. In short, there should be one observation per row, and each column should represent a feature or characteristic of that observation.
dplyr packageinstall.packages("dplyr")
After installing the package it is important that you load it into your R session with the library() function.
library(dplyr) ## ## Attaching package: 'dplyr' ## The following objects are masked from 'package:stats': ## ## filter, lag ## The following objects are masked from 'package:base': ## ## intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
select()We will use a dataset containing air pollution and temperature data for the city of Chicago in the U.S.
chicago <- readRDS("chicago.rds")
dim(chicago) ## [1] 6940 8 str(chicago) ## 'data.frame': 6940 obs. of 8 variables: ## $ city : chr "chic" "chic" "chic" "chic" ... ## $ tmpd : num 31.5 33 33 29 32 40 34.5 29 26.5 32.5 ... ## $ dptp : num 31.5 29.9 27.4 28.6 28.9 ... ## $ date : Date, format: "1987-01-01" "1987-01-02" ... ## $ pm25tmean2: num NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ... ## $ pm10tmean2: num 34 NA 34.2 47 NA ... ## $ o3tmean2 : num 4.25 3.3 3.33 4.38 4.75 ... ## $ no2tmean2 : num 20 23.2 23.8 30.4 30.3 ...
Sometimes you may want to use only a couple of variables out of many.
names(chicago)[1:3] ## [1] "city" "tmpd" "dptp" subset <- select(chicago, city:dptp) head(subset) ## city tmpd dptp ## 1 chic 31.5 31.500 ## 2 chic 33.0 29.875 ## 3 chic 33.0 27.375 ## 4 chic 29.0 28.625 ## 5 chic 32.0 28.875 ## 6 chic 40.0 35.125
Sometimes you may want to drop some variables that are not useful.
select(chicago, -(city:dptp))
If you wanted to keep every variable that ends with a "2", we could do
subset <- select(chicago, ends_with("2"))
str(subset)
## 'data.frame': 6940 obs. of 4 variables:
## $ pm25tmean2: num NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
## $ pm10tmean2: num 34 NA 34.2 47 NA ...
## $ o3tmean2 : num 4.25 3.3 3.33 4.38 4.75 ...
## $ no2tmean2 : num 20 23.2 23.8 30.4 30.3 ...
Or if we wanted to keep every variable that starts with a "d", we could do
subset <- select(chicago, starts_with("d"))
str(subset)
## 'data.frame': 6940 obs. of 2 variables:
## $ dptp: num 31.5 29.9 27.4 28.6 28.9 ...
## $ date: Date, format: "1987-01-01" "1987-01-02" ...
filter()The filter() function is used to extract subsets of rows from a data frame.
chic.f <- filter(chicago, pm25tmean2 > 30) str(chic.f) ## 'data.frame': 194 obs. of 8 variables: ## $ city : chr "chic" "chic" "chic" "chic" ... ## $ tmpd : num 23 28 55 59 57 57 75 61 73 78 ... ## $ dptp : num 21.9 25.8 51.3 53.7 52 56 65.8 59 60.3 67.1 ... ## $ date : Date, format: "1998-01-17" "1998-01-23" ... ## $ pm25tmean2: num 38.1 34 39.4 35.4 33.3 ... ## $ pm10tmean2: num 32.5 38.7 34 28.5 35 ... ## $ o3tmean2 : num 3.18 1.75 10.79 14.3 20.66 ... ## $ no2tmean2 : num 25.3 29.4 25.3 31.4 26.8 ...
summary(chic.f$pm25tmean2) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 30.05 32.12 35.04 36.63 39.53 61.50
We could for example extract the rows where PM2.5 is greater than 30 and temperature is greater than 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
chic.f <- filter(chicago, pm25tmean2 > 30 & tmpd > 80) select(chic.f, date, tmpd, pm25tmean2) ## date tmpd pm25tmean2 ## 1 1998-08-23 81 39.60000 ## 2 1998-09-06 81 31.50000 ## 3 2001-07-20 82 32.30000 ## 4 2001-08-01 84 43.70000 ## 5 2001-08-08 85 38.83750 ## 6 2001-08-09 84 38.20000 ## 7 2002-06-20 82 33.00000 ## 8 2002-06-23 82 42.50000 ## 9 2002-07-08 81 33.10000 ## 10 2002-07-18 82 38.85000 ## 11 2003-06-25 82 33.90000 ## 12 2003-07-04 84 32.90000 ## 13 2005-06-24 86 31.85714 ## 14 2005-06-27 82 51.53750 ## 15 2005-06-28 85 31.20000 ## 16 2005-07-17 84 32.70000 ## 17 2005-08-03 84 37.90000
arrange()The arrange() function is used to reorder rows of a data frame according to one of the variables/columns.
Here we can order the rows of the data frame by date, so that the first row is the earliest (oldest) observation and the last row is the latest (most recent) observation.
chicago <- arrange(chicago, date)
We can now check the first few rows
head(select(chicago, date, pm25tmean2), 3) ## date pm25tmean2 ## 1 1987-01-01 NA ## 2 1987-01-02 NA ## 3 1987-01-03 NA
and the last few rows.
tail(select(chicago, date, pm25tmean2), 3) ## date pm25tmean2 ## 6938 2005-12-29 7.45000 ## 6939 2005-12-30 15.05714 ## 6940 2005-12-31 15.00000
Columns can be arranged in descending order too by useing the special desc() operator.
chicago <- arrange(chicago, desc(date))
Looking at the first three and last three rows shows the dates in descending order.
head(select(chicago, date, pm25tmean2), 3) ## date pm25tmean2 ## 1 2005-12-31 15.00000 ## 2 2005-12-30 15.05714 ## 3 2005-12-29 7.45000 tail(select(chicago, date, pm25tmean2), 3) ## date pm25tmean2 ## 6938 1987-01-03 NA ## 6939 1987-01-02 NA ## 6940 1987-01-01 NA
How would you do this in base R without dplyr?
rename()Renaming a variable in a data frame in R is surprisingly hard to do! The rename() function is designed to make this process easier.
Here you can see the names of the first five variables in the chicago data frame.
head(chicago[, 1:5], 3) ## city tmpd dptp date pm25tmean2 ## 1 chic 35 30.1 2005-12-31 15.00000 ## 2 chic 36 31.0 2005-12-30 15.05714 ## 3 chic 35 29.4 2005-12-29 7.45000
Now we rename the awkward variable names.
chicago <- rename(chicago, dewpoint = dptp, pm25 = pm25tmean2) head(chicago[, 1:5], 3) ## city tmpd dewpoint date pm25 ## 1 chic 35 30.1 2005-12-31 15.00000 ## 2 chic 36 31.0 2005-12-30 15.05714 ## 3 chic 35 29.4 2005-12-29 7.45000
mutate()The mutate() function exists to compute transformations of variables in a data frame.
For example, with air pollution data, we often want to detrend the data by subtracting the mean from the data.
chicago <- mutate(chicago, pm25detrend = pm25 - mean(pm25, na.rm = TRUE)) head(chicago) ## city tmpd dewpoint date pm25 pm10tmean2 o3tmean2 no2tmean2 ## 1 chic 35 30.1 2005-12-31 15.00000 23.5 2.531250 13.25000 ## 2 chic 36 31.0 2005-12-30 15.05714 19.2 3.034420 22.80556 ## 3 chic 35 29.4 2005-12-29 7.45000 23.5 6.794837 19.97222 ## 4 chic 37 34.5 2005-12-28 17.75000 27.5 3.260417 19.28563 ## 5 chic 40 33.6 2005-12-27 23.56000 27.0 4.468750 23.50000 ## 6 chic 35 29.6 2005-12-26 8.40000 8.5 14.041667 16.81944 ## pm25detrend ## 1 -1.230958 ## 2 -1.173815 ## 3 -8.780958 ## 4 1.519042 ## 5 7.329042 ## 6 -7.830958
group_by()The group_by() function is used to generate summary statistics from the data frame within strata defined by a variable. For example, in this air pollution dataset, you might want to know what the average annual level of PM2.5 is.
First, we can create a year varible using as.POSIXlt().
chicago <- mutate(chicago, year = as.POSIXlt(date)$year + 1900)
Now we can create a separate data frame that splits the original data frame by year.
years <- group_by(chicago, year)
Finally, we compute summary statistics for each year in the data frame with the summarize() function.
summarize(years, pm25 = mean(pm25, na.rm = TRUE),
o3 = max(o3tmean2, na.rm = TRUE),
no2 = median(no2tmean2, na.rm = TRUE))
## # A tibble: 19 x 4
## year pm25 o3 no2
## <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 1987 NaN 63.0 23.5
## 2 1988 NaN 61.7 24.5
## 3 1989 NaN 59.7 26.1
## 4 1990 NaN 52.2 22.6
## 5 1991 NaN 63.1 21.4
## 6 1992 NaN 50.8 24.8
## 7 1993 NaN 44.3 25.8
## 8 1994 NaN 52.2 28.5
## 9 1995 NaN 66.6 27.3
## 10 1996 NaN 58.4 26.4
## 11 1997 NaN 56.5 25.5
## 12 1998 18.3 50.7 24.6
## 13 1999 18.5 57.5 24.7
## 14 2000 16.9 55.8 23.5
## 15 2001 16.9 51.8 25.1
## 16 2002 15.3 54.9 22.7
## 17 2003 15.2 56.2 24.6
## 18 2004 14.6 44.5 23.4
## 19 2005 16.2 58.8 22.6
group_by()In a slightly more complicated example, we might want to know what are the average levels of ozone (o3) and nitrogen dioxide (no2) within quintiles of pm25. A slicker way to do this would be through a regression model, but we can actually do this quickly with group_by() and summarize().
First, we can create a categorical variable of pm25 divided into quintiles.
qq <- quantile(chicago$pm25, seq(0, 1, 0.2), na.rm = TRUE) chicago <- mutate(chicago, pm25.quint = cut(pm25, qq))
Now we can group the data frame by the pm25.quint variable.
quint <- group_by(chicago, pm25.quint)
Finally, we can compute the mean of o3 and no2 within quintiles of pm25.
summarize(quint, o3 = mean(o3tmean2, na.rm = TRUE),
no2 = mean(no2tmean2, na.rm = TRUE))
## # A tibble: 6 x 3
## pm25.quint o3 no2
## <fct> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 (1.7,8.7] 21.7 18.0
## 2 (8.7,12.4] 20.4 22.1
## 3 (12.4,16.7] 20.7 24.4
## 4 (16.7,22.6] 19.9 27.3
## 5 (22.6,61.5] 20.3 29.6
## 6 <NA> 18.8 25.8
%>%The pipeline operater %>% is very handy for stringing together multiple dplyr functions in a sequence of operations.
third(second(first(x)))
This nesting is not a natural way to think about a sequence of operations. The %>% operator allows you to string operations in a left-to-right fashion, i.e.
first(x) %>% second %>% third
%>%Take the example that we just did in the last section where we computed the mean of o3 and no2 within quintiles of pm25. There we had to
pm25.quinto3 and no2 in the sub-groups defined by pm25.quintThat can be done with the following sequence in a single R expression.
mutate(chicago, pm25.quint = cut(pm25, qq)) %>% group_by(pm25.quint) %>% summarize(o3 = mean(o3tmean2, na.rm = TRUE), no2 = mean(no2tmean2, na.rm = TRUE)) ## # A tibble: 6 x 3 ## pm25.quint o3 no2 ## <fct> <dbl> <dbl> ## 1 (1.7,8.7] 21.7 18.0 ## 2 (8.7,12.4] 20.4 22.1 ## 3 (12.4,16.7] 20.7 24.4 ## 4 (16.7,22.6] 19.9 27.3 ## 5 (22.6,61.5] 20.3 29.6 ## 6 <NA> 18.8 25.8
The dplyr package provides a concise set of operations for managing data frames. With these functions we can do a number of complex operations in just a few lines of code. In particular, we can often conduct the beginnings of an exploratory analysis with the powerful combination of group_by() and summarize().
dplyr can work with other data frame "backends" such as SQL databases. There is an SQL interface for relational databases via the DBI package
dplyr can be integrated with the data.table package for large fast tables
The dplyr package is handy way to both simplify and speed up your data frame management code. It's rare that you get such a combination at the same time!
dplyrYou'll be working with the airquality in the R package datasets. Bear in mind %>%.