Groupby function in R using Dplyr – group_by

Groupby Function in R – group_by is used to group the dataframe in R.  Dplyr package in R is provided with group_by() function which groups the dataframe by multiple columns with mean, sum and other functions like count, maximum and minimum.

  • dplyr group by can be done by using pipe operator (%>%) or by using aggregate() function or by summarise_at() Example of each is shown below.
  • Special weightage on dplyr pipe operator (%>%) is given in this section with all the groupby functions like  groupby minimum & maximum, groupby count & mean, groupby sum is depicted with an example of each.
  • Groupby mean in R using dplyr pipe operator.
  • Groupby count in R using dplyr pipe operator.
  • Groupby minimum and Groupby maximum in R using dplyr pipe operator.
  • Groupby sum in R using dplyr pipe operator.

Pictographical example of a groupby sum in Dplyr

Generic Groupby sum 1

 

Groupby function in R with dplyr using summarize_at() function:

We will be using iris data to depict the example of group_by() function

library(dplyr)
mydata2 <-iris 

# Groupby function for dataframe in R
summarise_at(group_by(mydata2,Species),vars(Sepal.Length),funs(mean(.,na.rm=TRUE)))

Mean of Sepal.Length is grouped by Species variable.

Group by function in R using dplyr 1

 

Groupby function in R with dplyr pipe operator %>%:

library(dplyr)
mydata2 = iris 

# Group by function for dataframe in R using pipe operator 
mydata2 %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarise_at(vars(Sepal.Length),funs(sum(.,na.rm=TRUE)))

Sum of Sepal.Length is grouped by Species variable with the help of pipe operator (%>%) in dplyr package. As the result we will getting the sum of all the Sepal.Lengths of each species

So the output will be

Group by function in R using dplyr 3

 

Groupby in R without dplyr using aggregate function:

In this example we will be using aggregate function in R to do group by operation as shown below

mydata2 <-iris 

# Group by in R using aggregate function

aggregate(mydata2$Sepal.Length, by=list(Species=mydata2$Species), FUN=sum)

Sum of Sepal.Length is grouped by Species variable with the help of aggregate function in R

Group by function in R using dplyr 2

 

 

More Emphasis on Pipe Operator (%>%):

Groupby mean in R with dplyr pipe operator %>%:

library(dplyr)
mydata2 = iris 

# Group by function for dataframe in R using pipe operator 
mydata2 %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarise_at(vars(Sepal.Length),funs(mean(.,na.rm=TRUE)))

mean of Sepal.Length is grouped by Species variable with the help of pipe operator (%>%) in dplyr package. As the result we will getting the mean Sepal.Length of each species

So the output will be

Groupby function in R using Dplyr - group_by 12

 

Groupby count in R with dplyr pipe operator %>%:

library(dplyr)
mydata2 = iris 

# Group by function for dataframe in R using pipe operator 
mydata2 %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarise_at(vars(Sepal.Length),funs(length))

count  of Sepal.Length column is grouped by Species variable with the help of pipe operator (%>%) in dplyr package. As the result we will getting the count of observations of Sepal.Length for each species

So the output will be

Groupby function in R using Dplyr - group_by 13

 

Groupby max in R with dplyr pipe operator %>%:

library(dplyr)
mydata2 = iris 

# Group by function for dataframe in R using pipe operator 
mydata2 %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarise_at(vars(Sepal.Length),funs(max(.,na.rm=TRUE)))

max of Sepal.Length column is grouped by Species variable with the help of pipe operator (%>%) in dplyr package. As the result we will getting the max value of Sepal.Length variable for each species

So the output will be

Groupby function in R using Dplyr - group_by 14

 

Groupby min in R with dplyr pipe operator %>%:

library(dplyr)
mydata2 = iris 

# Group by function for dataframe in R using pipe operator 
mydata2 %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarise_at(vars(Sepal.Length),funs(min(.,na.rm=TRUE)))

min of Sepal.Length column is grouped by Species variable with the help of pipe operator (%>%) in dplyr package. As the result we will getting the min value of Sepal.Length variable for each species

So the output will be

Groupby function in R using Dplyr - group_by 15

 

For further understanding of group_by() function in R using dplyr one can refer the dplyr documentation


Related Topics:

 

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Author

  • Sridhar Venkatachalam

    With close to 10 years on Experience in data science and machine learning Have extensively worked on programming languages like R, Python (Pandas), SAS, Pyspark.