I want to start using dplyr in place of ddply but I can't get a handle on how it works (I've read the documentation).
For example, why when I try to mutate() something does the "group_by" function not work as it's supposed to?
Looking at mtcars:
library(car)
Say I make a data.frame which is a summary of mtcars, grouped by "cyl" and "gear":
df1 <- mtcars %.%
group_by(cyl, gear) %.%
summarise(
newvar = sum(wt)
)
Then say I want to further summarise this dataframe. With ddply, it'd be straightforward, but when I try to do with with dplyr, it's not actually "grouping by":
df2 <- df1 %.%
group_by(cyl) %.%
mutate(
newvar2 = newvar + 5
)
Still yields an ungrouped output:
cyl gear newvar newvar2
1 6 3 6.675 11.675
2 4 4 19.025 24.025
3 6 4 12.375 17.375
4 6 5 2.770 7.770
5 4 3 2.465 7.465
6 8 3 49.249 54.249
7 4 5 3.653 8.653
8 8 5 6.740 11.740
Am I doing something wrong with the syntax?
Edit:
If I were to do this with plyr and ddply:
df1 <- ddply(mtcars, .(cyl, gear), summarise, newvar = sum(wt))
and then to get the second df:
df2 <- ddply(df1, .(cyl), summarise, newvar2 = sum(newvar) + 5)
But that same approach, with sum(newvar) + 5 in the summarise() function doesn't work with dplyr...
Taking Dickoa's answer one step further -- as Hadley says "summarise peels off a single layer of grouping". It peels off grouping from the reverse order in which you applied it so you can just use
mtcars %>%
group_by(cyl, gear) %>%
summarise(newvar = sum(wt)) %>%
summarise(newvar2 = sum(newvar) + 5)
Note that this will give a different answer if you use group_by(gear, cyl) in the second line.
And to get your first attempt working:
df1 <- mtcars %>%
group_by(cyl, gear) %>%
summarise(newvar = sum(wt))
df2 <- df1 %>%
group_by(cyl) %>%
summarise(newvar2 = sum(newvar)+5)