Hi, This seems to work (although I have this sense that I am missing something, but I cannot put my finger on it). There are undoubtedly other ways:
## data in a form ready for copy and pasting (created using dput() ) dat <- structure(list(value = c(4L, 5L, 2L, 10L, 9L, 34L, 100L, 34L, 101L), level = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L, 3L ), .Label = c("A", "B", "C"), class = "factor"), rank = c(2L, 3L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 3L, 2L, 1L, 3L)), row.names = c(NA, -9L), .Names = c("value", "level", "rank"), class = "data.frame") ## add a variable, 'rank' that does what you want dat[order(dat$value), "rank"] <- with(dat[order(dat$value), ], ave(value, level, FUN = seq_along)) HTH, Josh On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 12:12 PM, xin wei <xin...@stat.psu.edu> wrote: > hello, I have the following data manipulation issue. the following is the > sample data: > > value level > 4 A > 5 A > 2 A > 10 B > 9 B > 34 B > 100 C > 34 C > 101 C. > > I hope to get the following result: > value level rank > 2 A 1 > 4 A 2 > 5 A 3 > 9 B 1 > 10 B 2 > 34 B 3 > 34 C 1 > 100 C 2 > 101 C. 3 > > as you may see, I need the data sorted and indexed within each level of > "level". what do I need to do calculate the rank variable? > > thanks, > > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/how-to-add-row-index-based-a-categorical-column-tp3556126p3556126.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Joshua Wiley Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology University of California, Los Angeles http://www.joshuawiley.com/ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.