aggregate {stats}R Documentation

Compute Summary Statistics of Data Subsets

Description

Splits the data into subsets, computes summary statistics for each, and returns the result in a convenient form.

Usage

aggregate(x, ...)

## Default S3 method:
aggregate(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'data.frame':
aggregate(x, by, FUN, ...)

## S3 method for class 'ts':
aggregate(x, nfrequency = 1, FUN = sum, ndeltat = 1,
          ts.eps = getOption("ts.eps"), ...)

Arguments

x an R object.
by a list of grouping elements, each as long as the variables in x.
FUN a scalar function to compute the summary statistics which can be applied to all data subsets.
nfrequency new number of observations per unit of time; must be a divisor of the frequency of x.
ndeltat new fraction of the sampling period between successive observations; must be a divisor of the sampling interval of x.
ts.eps tolerance used to decide if nfrequency is a sub-multiple of the original frequency.
... further arguments passed to or used by methods.

Details

aggregate is a generic function with methods for data frames and time series.

The default method aggregate.default uses the time series method if x is a time series, and otherwise coerces x to a data frame and calls the data frame method.

aggregate.data.frame is the data frame method. If x is not a data frame, it is coerced to one, which must have a non-zero number of rows. Then, each of the variables (columns) in x is split into subsets of cases (rows) of identical combinations of the components of by, and FUN is applied to each such subset with further arguments in ... passed to it. (I.e., tapply(VAR, by, FUN, ..., simplify = FALSE) is done for each variable VAR in x, conveniently wrapped into one call to lapply().) Empty subsets are removed, and the result is reformatted into a data frame containing the variables in by and x. The ones arising from by contain the unique combinations of grouping values used for determining the subsets, and the ones arising from x the corresponding summary statistics for the subset of the respective variables in x. Rows with missing values in any of the by variables will be omitted from the result.

aggregate.ts is the time series method. If x is not a time series, it is coerced to one. Then, the variables in x are split into appropriate blocks of length frequency(x) / nfrequency, and FUN is applied to each such block, with further (named) arguments in ... passed to it. The result returned is a time series with frequency nfrequency holding the aggregated values. Note that this make most sense for a quarterly or yearly result when the original series covers a whole number of quarters or years: in particular aggregating a monthly series to quarters starting in February does not give a conventional quarterly series.

FUN is passed to match.fun, and hence it can be a function or a symbol or character string naming a function.

Value

For the time series method, a time series of class "ts" or class c("mts", "ts").
For the data frame method, a data frame with columns corresponding to the grouping variables in by followed by aggregated columns from x. If the by has names, the non-empty times are used to label the columns in the results, with unnamed grouping variables being named Group.i for by[[i]].
Note: prior to R 2.6.0 the grouping variables were reported as factors with levels in alphabetical order in the current locale. Now the variable in the result is found by subsetting the original variable.

Author(s)

Kurt Hornik

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

See Also

apply, lapply, tapply.

Examples

## Compute the averages for the variables in 'state.x77', grouped
## according to the region (Northeast, South, North Central, West) that
## each state belongs to.
aggregate(state.x77, list(Region = state.region), mean)

## Compute the averages according to region and the occurrence of more
## than 130 days of frost.
aggregate(state.x77,
          list(Region = state.region,
               Cold = state.x77[,"Frost"] > 130),
          mean)
## (Note that no state in 'South' is THAT cold.)

## example with character variables and NAs
testDF <- data.frame(v1 = c(1,3,5,7,8,3,5,NA,4,5,7,9),
                     v2 = c(11,33,55,77,88,33,55,NA,44,55,77,99) )
by1 <- c("red","blue",1,2,NA,"big",1,2,"red",1,NA,12)
by2 <- c("wet","dry",99,95,NA,"damp",95,99,"red",99,NA,NA)
aggregate(x = testDF, by = list(by1, by2), FUN = "mean")

# and if you want to treat NAs as a group
fby1 <- factor(by1, exclude = "")
fby2 <- factor(by2, exclude = "")
aggregate(x = testDF, by = list(fby1, fby2), FUN = "mean")

## Compute the average annual approval ratings for American presidents.
aggregate(presidents, nfrequency = 1, FUN = mean)
## Give the summer less weight.
aggregate(presidents, nfrequency = 1,
          FUN = weighted.mean, w = c(1, 1, 0.5, 1))

[Package stats version 2.9.1 Index]