Why are my dplyr group_by & summarize not working properly? (name-collision with plyr)

Question

I have a data frame that looks like this:

#df
ID  DRUG FED  AUC0t  Tmax   Cmax
1    1     0   100     5      20
2    1     1   200     6      25
3    0     1   NA      2      30 
4    0     0   150     6      65

Ans so on. I want to summarize some statistics on AUC, Tmax and Cmax by drug DRUG and FED STATUS FED. I use dplyr. For example: for the AUC:

CI90lo <- function(x) quantile(x, probs=0.05, na.rm=TRUE)
CI90hi <- function(x) quantile(x, probs=0.95, na.rm=TRUE)  

summary <- df %>%
             group_by(DRUG,FED) %>%
             summarize(mean=mean(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE), 
                                 low = CI90lo(AUC0t), 
                                 high= CI90hi(AUC0t),
                                 min=min(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE),
                                 max=max(AUC0t,na.rm=TRUE), 
                                 sd= sd(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE))

However, the output is not grouped by DRUG and FED. It gives only one line containing the statistics of all by not faceted on DRUG and FED.

Any idea why? and how can I make it do the right thing?

Answer 1

I believe you've loaded plyr after dplyr, which is why you are getting an overall summary instead of a grouped summary.

This is what happens with plyr loaded last.

library(dplyr)
library(plyr)
df %>%
      group_by(DRUG,FED) %>%
      summarize(mean=mean(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE), 
                low = CI90lo(AUC0t), 
                 high= CI90hi(AUC0t),
                 min=min(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE),
                 max=max(AUC0t,na.rm=TRUE), 
                 sd= sd(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE))

  mean low high min max sd
1  150 105  195 100 200 50

Now remove plyr and try again and you get the grouped summary.

detach(package:plyr)
df %>%
      group_by(DRUG,FED) %>%
      summarize(mean=mean(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE), 
                low = CI90lo(AUC0t), 
                 high= CI90hi(AUC0t),
                 min=min(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE),
                 max=max(AUC0t,na.rm=TRUE), 
                 sd= sd(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE))

Source: local data frame [4 x 8]
Groups: DRUG

  DRUG FED mean low high min max  sd
1    0   0  150 150  150 150 150 NaN
2    0   1  NaN  NA   NA  NA  NA NaN
3    1   0  100 100  100 100 100 NaN
4    1   1  200 200  200 200 200 NaN

Answer 2

A variant of aosmith's answer that might help some folks out. Direct R to call dplyr's functions directly. Good trick when one package interferes with another.

df %>%
      dplyr::group_by(DRUG,FED) %>%
      dplyr::summarize(mean=mean(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE), 
                low = CI90lo(AUC0t), 
                 high= CI90hi(AUC0t),
                 min=min(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE),
                 max=max(AUC0t,na.rm=TRUE), 
                 sd= sd(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE))

Answer 3

Or you could consider using data.table

library(data.table)
setDT(df)  # set the data frame as data table
df[, list(mean = mean(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE),
          low = CI90lo(AUC0t), 
          high = CI90hi(AUC0t), 
          min = as.double(min(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE)),
          max = as.double(max(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE)), 
          sd = sd(AUC0t, na.rm=TRUE)),
   by=list(DRUG, FED)]

#    DRUG FED mean low high min  max sd
# 1:    1   0  100 100  100 100  100 NA
# 2:    1   1  200 200  200 200  200 NA
# 3:    0   1  NaN  NA   NA Inf -Inf NA
# 4:    0   0  150 150  150 150  150 NA
# Warning messages:
#   1: In min(AUC0t, na.rm = TRUE) :
#   no non-missing arguments to min; returning Inf
# 2: In max(AUC0t, na.rm = TRUE) :
#   no non-missing arguments to max; returning -Inf