Extract row corresponding to minimum value of a variable by group

Question

I wish to (1) group data by one variable (State), (2) within each group find the row of minimum value of another variable (Employees), and (3) extr

Answer 1

In base you can use ave to get min per group and compare this with Employees and get a logical vector to subset the data.frame.

data[data$Employees == ave(data$Employees, data$State, FUN=min),]
#  State Company Employees
#4    AK       D        24
#5    RI       E        19

Or compare it already in the function.

data[as.logical(ave(data$Employees, data$State, FUN=function(x) x==min(x))),]
#data[ave(data$Employees, data$State, FUN=function(x) x==min(x))==1,] #Variant
#  State Company Employees
#4    AK       D        24
#5    RI       E        19