R Language Split function Using split in the split-apply-combine paradigm
Example
A popular form of data analysis is split-apply-combine, in which you split your data into groups, apply some sort of processing on each group, and then combine the results.
Let's consider a data analysis where we want to obtain the two cars with the best miles per gallon (mpg) for each cylinder count (cyl) in the built-in mtcars dataset. First, we split the mtcars data frame by the cylinder count:
(spl <- split(mtcars, mtcars$cyl))
# $`4`
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# Datsun 710 22.8 4 108.0 93 3.85 2.320 18.61 1 1 4 1
# Merc 240D 24.4 4 146.7 62 3.69 3.190 20.00 1 0 4 2
# Merc 230 22.8 4 140.8 95 3.92 3.150 22.90 1 0 4 2
# Fiat 128 32.4 4 78.7 66 4.08 2.200 19.47 1 1 4 1
# ...
#
# $`6`
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# Mazda RX4 21.0 6 160.0 110 3.90 2.620 16.46 0 1 4 4
# Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0 6 160.0 110 3.90 2.875 17.02 0 1 4 4
# Hornet 4 Drive 21.4 6 258.0 110 3.08 3.215 19.44 1 0 3 1
# Valiant 18.1 6 225.0 105 2.76 3.460 20.22 1 0 3 1
# ...
#
# $`8`
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# Hornet Sportabout 18.7 8 360.0 175 3.15 3.440 17.02 0 0 3 2
# Duster 360 14.3 8 360.0 245 3.21 3.570 15.84 0 0 3 4
# Merc 450SE 16.4 8 275.8 180 3.07 4.070 17.40 0 0 3 3
# Merc 450SL 17.3 8 275.8 180 3.07 3.730 17.60 0 0 3 3
# ...
This has returned a list of data frames, one for each cylinder count. As indicated by the output, we could obtain the relevant data frames with spl$`4`, spl$`6`, and spl$`8` (some might find it more visually appealing to use spl$"4" or spl[["4"]] instead).
Now, we can use lapply to loop through this list, applying our function that extracts the cars with the best 2 mpg values from each of the list elements:
(best2 <- lapply(spl, function(x) tail(x[order(x$mpg),], 2)))
# $`4`
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# Fiat 128 32.4 4 78.7 66 4.08 2.200 19.47 1 1 4 1
# Toyota Corolla 33.9 4 71.1 65 4.22 1.835 19.90 1 1 4 1
#
# $`6`
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02 0 1 4 4
# Hornet 4 Drive 21.4 6 258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44 1 0 3 1
#
# $`8`
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# Hornet Sportabout 18.7 8 360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02 0 0 3 2
# Pontiac Firebird 19.2 8 400 175 3.08 3.845 17.05 0 0 3 2
Finally, we can combine everything together using rbind. We want to call rbind(best2[["4"]], best2[["6"]], best2[["8"]]), but this would be tedious if we had a huge list. As a result, we use:
do.call(rbind, best2)
# mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
# 4.Fiat 128 32.4 4 78.7 66 4.08 2.200 19.47 1 1 4 1
# 4.Toyota Corolla 33.9 4 71.1 65 4.22 1.835 19.90 1 1 4 1
# 6.Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0 6 160.0 110 3.90 2.875 17.02 0 1 4 4
# 6.Hornet 4 Drive 21.4 6 258.0 110 3.08 3.215 19.44 1 0 3 1
# 8.Hornet Sportabout 18.7 8 360.0 175 3.15 3.440 17.02 0 0 3 2
# 8.Pontiac Firebird 19.2 8 400.0 175 3.08 3.845 17.05 0 0 3 2
This returns the result of rbind (argument 1, a function) with all the elements of best2 (argument 2, a list) passed as arguments.
With simple analyses like this one, it can be more compact (and possibly much less readable!) to do the whole split-apply-combine in a single line of code:
do.call(rbind, lapply(split(mtcars, mtcars$cyl), function(x) tail(x[order(x$mpg),], 2)))
It is also worth noting that the lapply(split(x,f), FUN) combination can be alternatively framed using the ?by function:
by(mtcars, mtcars$cyl, function(x) tail(x[order(x$mpg),], 2))
do.call(rbind, by(mtcars, mtcars$cyl, function(x) tail(x[order(x$mpg),], 2)))
