What is the most useful R trick? [closed]

Answer 1

A way to speed up code and eliminate for loops.

instead of for loops that loop through a dataframe looking for values. just take a subset of the df with those values, much quicker.

so instead of:

for(i in 1:nrow(df)){
  if (df$column[i] == x) {
    df$column2[i] <- y
    or any other similiar code
  }
}

do something like this:

df$column2[df$column1 == x] <- y

that base concept is applicable extremely often and is a great way to get rid of for loops

Answer 2

Although this question has been up for a while I recently discovered a great trick on the SAS and R blog for using the command cut. The command is used to divide data into categories and I will use the iris dataset as an example and divide it into 10 categories:

> irisSL <- iris$Sepal.Length
> str(irisSL)
 num [1:150] 5.1 4.9 4.7 4.6 5 5.4 4.6 5 4.4 4.9 ...
> cut(irisSL, 10)
  [1] (5.02,5.38] (4.66,5.02] (4.66,5.02] (4.3,4.66]  (4.66,5.02] (5.38,5.74] (4.3,4.66]  (4.66,5.02] (4.3,4.66]  (4.66,5.02]
 [11] (5.38,5.74] (4.66,5.02] (4.66,5.02] (4.3,4.66]  (5.74,6.1]  (5.38,5.74] (5.38,5.74] (5.02,5.38] (5.38,5.74] (5.02,5.38]
 [21] (5.38,5.74] (5.02,5.38] (4.3,4.66]  (5.02,5.38] (4.66,5.02] (4.66,5.02] (4.66,5.02] (5.02,5.38] (5.02,5.38] (4.66,5.02]
 [31] (4.66,5.02] (5.38,5.74] (5.02,5.38] (5.38,5.74] (4.66,5.02] (4.66,5.02] (5.38,5.74] (4.66,5.02] (4.3,4.66]  (5.02,5.38]
 [41] (4.66,5.02] (4.3,4.66]  (4.3,4.66]  (4.66,5.02] (5.02,5.38] (4.66,5.02] (5.02,5.38] (4.3,4.66]  (5.02,5.38] (4.66,5.02]
 [51] (6.82,7.18] (6.1,6.46]  (6.82,7.18] (5.38,5.74] (6.46,6.82] (5.38,5.74] (6.1,6.46]  (4.66,5.02] (6.46,6.82] (5.02,5.38]
 [61] (4.66,5.02] (5.74,6.1]  (5.74,6.1]  (5.74,6.1]  (5.38,5.74] (6.46,6.82] (5.38,5.74] (5.74,6.1]  (6.1,6.46]  (5.38,5.74]
 [71] (5.74,6.1]  (5.74,6.1]  (6.1,6.46]  (5.74,6.1]  (6.1,6.46]  (6.46,6.82] (6.46,6.82] (6.46,6.82] (5.74,6.1]  (5.38,5.74]
 [81] (5.38,5.74] (5.38,5.74] (5.74,6.1]  (5.74,6.1]  (5.38,5.74] (5.74,6.1]  (6.46,6.82] (6.1,6.46]  (5.38,5.74] (5.38,5.74]
 [91] (5.38,5.74] (5.74,6.1]  (5.74,6.1]  (4.66,5.02] (5.38,5.74] (5.38,5.74] (5.38,5.74] (6.1,6.46]  (5.02,5.38] (5.38,5.74]
[101] (6.1,6.46]  (5.74,6.1]  (6.82,7.18] (6.1,6.46]  (6.46,6.82] (7.54,7.9]  (4.66,5.02] (7.18,7.54] (6.46,6.82] (7.18,7.54]
[111] (6.46,6.82] (6.1,6.46]  (6.46,6.82] (5.38,5.74] (5.74,6.1]  (6.1,6.46]  (6.46,6.82] (7.54,7.9]  (7.54,7.9]  (5.74,6.1] 
[121] (6.82,7.18] (5.38,5.74] (7.54,7.9]  (6.1,6.46]  (6.46,6.82] (7.18,7.54] (6.1,6.46]  (5.74,6.1]  (6.1,6.46]  (7.18,7.54]
[131] (7.18,7.54] (7.54,7.9]  (6.1,6.46]  (6.1,6.46]  (5.74,6.1]  (7.54,7.9]  (6.1,6.46]  (6.1,6.46]  (5.74,6.1]  (6.82,7.18]
[141] (6.46,6.82] (6.82,7.18] (5.74,6.1]  (6.46,6.82] (6.46,6.82] (6.46,6.82] (6.1,6.46]  (6.46,6.82] (6.1,6.46]  (5.74,6.1] 
10 Levels: (4.3,4.66] (4.66,5.02] (5.02,5.38] (5.38,5.74] (5.74,6.1] (6.1,6.46] (6.46,6.82] (6.82,7.18] ... (7.54,7.9]

Answer 3

Sometimes you need to rbind multiple data frames. do.call() will let you do that (someone had to explain this to me when bind I asked this question, as it doesn't appear to be an obvious use).

foo <- list()

foo[[1]] <- data.frame(a=1:5, b=11:15)
foo[[2]] <- data.frame(a=101:105, b=111:115)
foo[[3]] <- data.frame(a=200:210, b=300:310)

do.call(rbind, foo)

Answer 4

?ave

Subsets of 'x[]' are averaged, where each subset consist of those observations with the same factor levels. Usage: ave(x, ..., FUN = mean)

I use it all the time. (e.g. in this answer here at so)

Answer 5

d = '~/R Code/Library/'

files = list.files(d,'.r$')

for (f in files) { if (!(f == 'mysource.r' )) { print(paste('Sourcing',f)) source(paste(d,f,sep='')) } }

I use the above code to source all the files in a directory at start up with various utility programs I use in my interactive session with R. I am sure there are better ways but I find it useful for my work. The line that does this is as follows.

source("~/R Code/Library/mysource.r")

Answer 6

I do a lot of basic manipulation of data, so here are two built-in functions ( transform , subset ) and one library ( sqldf ) that I use daily.

create sample sales data

sales <- expand.grid(country = c('USA', 'UK', 'FR'),
                     product = c(1, 2, 3))
sales$revenue <- rnorm(dim(sales)[1], mean=100, sd=10)

> sales
  country product   revenue
1     USA       1 108.45965
2      UK       1  97.07981
3      FR       1  99.66225
4     USA       2 100.34754
5      UK       2  87.12262
6      FR       2 112.86084
7     USA       3  95.87880
8      UK       3  96.43581
9      FR       3  94.59259

use transform() to add a column

## transform currency to euros
usd2eur <- 1.434
transform(sales, euro = revenue * usd2eur)

>
  country product   revenue     euro
1     USA       1 108.45965 155.5311
2      UK       1  97.07981 139.2125
3      FR       1  99.66225 142.9157
...

use subset() to slice the data

subset(sales, 
       country == 'USA' & product %in% c(1, 2), 
       select = c('product', 'revenue'))

>
  product  revenue
1       1 108.4597
4       2 100.3475

use sqldf() to slice and aggregate with SQL

The sqldf package provides an SQL interface to R data frames

##  recast the previous subset() expression in SQL
sqldf('SELECT product, revenue FROM sales \
       WHERE country = "USA" \
       AND product IN (1,2)')

>
  product  revenue
1       1 108.4597
2       2 100.3475

Perform an aggregation or GROUP BY

sqldf('select country, sum(revenue) revenue \ 
       FROM sales \
       GROUP BY country')

>
  country  revenue
1      FR 307.1157
2      UK 280.6382
3     USA 304.6860

For more sophisticated map-reduce-like functionality on data frames, check out the plyr package. And if find yourself wanting to pull your hair out, I recommend checking out Data Manipulation with R.