Apply several summary functions on several variables by group in one call

Question

I have the following data frame

x <- read.table(text = \"  id1 id2 val1 val2
1   a   x    1    9
2   a   x    2    4
3   a   y    3    5
4   a   y    4            


        

Answer 1

Given this in the question :

I could use the plyr package, but my data set is quite large and plyr is very slow (almost unusable) when the size of the dataset grows.

Then in data.table (1.9.4+) you could try :

> DT
   id1 id2 val1 val2
1:   a   x    1    9
2:   a   x    2    4
3:   a   y    3    5
4:   a   y    4    9
5:   b   x    1    7
6:   b   y    4    4
7:   b   x    3    9
8:   b   y    2    8

> DT[ , .(mean(val1), mean(val2), .N), by = .(id1, id2)]   # simplest
   id1 id2  V1  V2 N
1:   a   x 1.5 6.5 2
2:   a   y 3.5 7.0 2
3:   b   x 2.0 8.0 2
4:   b   y 3.0 6.0 2

> DT[ , .(val1.m = mean(val1), val2.m = mean(val2), count = .N), by = .(id1, id2)]  # named
   id1 id2 val1.m val2.m count
1:   a   x    1.5    6.5     2
2:   a   y    3.5    7.0     2
3:   b   x    2.0    8.0     2
4:   b   y    3.0    6.0     2

> DT[ , c(lapply(.SD, mean), count = .N), by = .(id1, id2)]   # mean over all columns
   id1 id2 val1 val2 count
1:   a   x  1.5  6.5     2
2:   a   y  3.5  7.0     2
3:   b   x  2.0  8.0     2
4:   b   y  3.0  6.0     2

For timings comparing aggregate (used in question and all 3 other answers) to data.table see this benchmark (the agg and agg.x cases).