Aggregate multiple rows of the same data.frame in R based on common values in given columns

Question

I have a data.frame that looks like this:

# set example data
df <- read.table(textConnection(\"item\\tsize\         


        

Answer 1

Here is the solution using the ddply from plyr package:

library(plyr)
ddply(df,.(item),colwise(mean))
  item size weight value
1    A    2      3     5
2    B    1      2     3
3    C    3      2     1