On 26-03-2014, at 17:09, Johannes Radinger <johannesradin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, > > I have data in a dataframe in following structure > var1 <- c("a","b","c","a","b","c","a","b","c") > var2 <- c("X","X","X","Y","Y","Y","Z","Z","Z") > var3 <- c(1,2,2,5,2,6,7,4,4) > df <- data.frame(var1,var2,var3) > > Now I'd like to calculate relative values of var3. This values > should be relative to the base value (where var1=c) which is > indicated for each group (var2). > > To illustrate how my result column should look like I divide > the column var3 by a vector c(2,2,2,6,6,6,4,4,4) (= for each group > of var2 the value c) > > Of course this can also be done like this: > df$div <- rep(df$var3[df$var1=="c"],each=length(unique(df$var1))) > df$result_calc <- df$var3/df$div > > > However what when the dataframe is not as simple and not that well ordered > as > in the example here. So for example there is always a value c for each group > but all the "c"s are clumped in the last rows of the dataframe or scatterd > in a random > mannar. Is there a simple way to still calculate such relative values. > Probably with an approach using apply, but maybe someone can give me a hint. > Or do I need to sort my dataframe in order to do such calculations? Create a list splitting the data.frame into groups defined by column var2. And perform the calculation you need. Like this df <- data.frame(var1,var2,var3, stringsAsFactors=FALSE) L <- by(df,list(df$var2), FUN=function(x) { k <- which(x$var1=="c"); x$rel <- x$var3/x$var3[k];x}) And then convert the list L back to a data.frame. See the following two stackoverflow pages for the various ways this can be done. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4227223/r-list-to-data-frame http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4512465/what-is-the-most-efficient-way-to-cast-a-list-as-a-data-frame?rq=1 Two methods from the first page: data.frame(Reduce(rbind,L)) library (plyr) ldply (L, data.frame) and one method from the second page: for this method do.call(rbind,L) Berend ______________________________________________ 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.