R Language *apply family of functions (functionals) Combining multiple `data.frames` (`lapply`, `mapply`)

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Example

In this exercise, we will generate four bootstrap linear regression models and combine the summaries of these models into a single data frame.

library(broom)

#* Create the bootstrap data sets
BootData <- lapply(1:4,
                   function(i) mtcars[sample(1:nrow(mtcars),
                                             size = nrow(mtcars),
                                             replace = TRUE), ])

#* Fit the models
Models <- lapply(BootData,
                 function(BD) lm(mpg ~ qsec + wt + factor(am),
                                 data = BD))

#* Tidy the output into a data.frame
Tidied <- lapply(Models,
                 tidy)

#* Give each element in the Tidied list a name
Tidied <- setNames(Tidied, paste0("Boot", seq_along(Tidied)))

At this point, we can take two approaches to inserting the names into the data.frame.

#* Insert the element name into the summary with `lapply`
#* Requires passing the names attribute to `lapply` and referencing `Tidied` within
#* the applied function.
Described_lapply <- 
 lapply(names(Tidied),
        function(nm) cbind(nm, Tidied[[nm]]))

Combined_lapply <- do.call("rbind", Described_lapply)

#* Insert the element name into the summary with `mapply`
#* Allows us to pass the names and the elements as separate arguments.
Described_mapply <- 
 mapply(
  function(nm, dframe) cbind(nm, dframe),
  names(Tidied),
  Tidied,
  SIMPLIFY = FALSE)

Combined_mapply <- do.call("rbind", Described_mapply)

If you're a fan of magrittr style pipes, you can accomplish the entire task in a single chain (though it may not be prudent to do so if you need any of the intermediary objects, such as the model objects themselves):

library(magrittr)
library(broom)
Combined <- lapply(1:4,
                   function(i) mtcars[sample(1:nrow(mtcars),
                                             size = nrow(mtcars),
                                             replace = TRUE), ]) %>%
 lapply(function(BD) lm( mpg ~ qsec + wt + factor(am), data = BD)) %>%
 lapply(tidy) %>%
 setNames(paste0("Boot", seq_along(.))) %>%
 mapply(function(nm, dframe) cbind(nm, dframe),
        nm = names(.),
        dframe = .,
        SIMPLIFY = FALSE) %>%
 do.call("rbind", .)


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