understanding ddply error message

Question

I am trying to figure out why I am getting an error message when using ddply.

Example data:

data<-data.frame(area=rep(c(\"VA\",\"OC\",\"ES\"),each=4)         


        

Answer 1

As stated in Narendra's comment to the question, this error can be caused by loading other packages that have a function called summarize (or summarise) that does not work as the function in plyr. For instance:

library(plyr)
library(Hmisc)

ddply(iris, "Species", summarize, mean_sepal_length = mean(Sepal.Length))
#> Error in .fun(piece, ...) : argument "by" is missing, with no default

One solution is to call the correct function with :: and the correct namespace:

ddply(iris, "Species", plyr::summarize, mean_sepal_length = mean(Sepal.Length))
#> Species mean_sepal_length
#> 1     setosa             5.006
#> 2 versicolor             5.936
#> 3  virginica             6.588

Alternatively, one can detach the package that has the wrong function:

detach(package:Hmisc)
ddply(iris, "Species", summarize, mean_sepal_length = mean(Sepal.Length))
#> Species mean_sepal_length
#> 1     setosa             5.006
#> 2 versicolor             5.936
#> 3  virginica             6.588

Finally, if one needs both packages and does not want to bother with ::, one can load them in the other order:

library(Hmisc)
library(plyr)

ddply(iris, "Species", summarize, mean_sepal_length = mean(Sepal.Length))
#> Species mean_sepal_length
#> 1     setosa             5.006
#> 2 versicolor             5.936
#> 3  virginica             6.588