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
You can do it all in one step and get proper labeling:
> aggregate(. ~ id1+id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) )
# id1 id2 val1.mn val1.n val2.mn val2.n
# 1 a x 1.5 2.0 6.5 2.0
# 2 b x 2.0 2.0 8.0 2.0
# 3 a y 3.5 2.0 7.0 2.0
# 4 b y 3.0 2.0 6.0 2.0
This creates a dataframe with two id columns and two matrix columns:
str( aggregate(. ~ id1+id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) ) )
'data.frame': 4 obs. of 4 variables:
$ id1 : Factor w/ 2 levels "a","b": 1 2 1 2
$ id2 : Factor w/ 2 levels "x","y": 1 1 2 2
$ val1: num [1:4, 1:2] 1.5 2 3.5 3 2 2 2 2
..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
.. ..$ : NULL
.. ..$ : chr "mn" "n"
$ val2: num [1:4, 1:2] 6.5 8 7 6 2 2 2 2
..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
.. ..$ : NULL
.. ..$ : chr "mn" "n"
As pointed out by @lord.garbage below, this can be converted to a dataframe with "simple" columns by using do.call(data.frame, ...)
str( do.call(data.frame, aggregate(. ~ id1+id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) ) )
)
'data.frame': 4 obs. of 6 variables:
$ id1 : Factor w/ 2 levels "a","b": 1 2 1 2
$ id2 : Factor w/ 2 levels "x","y": 1 1 2 2
$ val1.mn: num 1.5 2 3.5 3
$ val1.n : num 2 2 2 2
$ val2.mn: num 6.5 8 7 6
$ val2.n : num 2 2 2 2
This is the syntax for multiple variables on the LHS:
aggregate(cbind(val1, val2) ~ id1 + id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) )