Beginner tips on using plyr to calculate year-over-year change across groups

Question

I am new to plyr (and R) and looking for a little help to get started. Using the baseball dataset as an exaple, how could I calculate the year-over-year (yoy) change in \"a

Answer 1

I know you asked for a "plyr"-specific solution, but for the sake of sharing, here is an alternative approach in base R. In my opinion, I find the base R approach just as "readable". And, at least in this particular case, it's a lot faster!

output <- within(df1, {
  yoy <- ave(ab, team, lg, FUN = function(x) c(NA, diff(x)))
})
head(output)
#   year lg team   ab  yoy
# 1 1884 UA  ALT  108   NA
# 2 1997 AL  ANA 1703   NA
# 3 1998 AL  ANA 1502 -201
# 4 1999 AL  ANA  660 -842
# 5 2000 AL  ANA   85 -575
# 6 2001 AL  ANA  219  134

library(rbenchmark)

benchmark(DDPLY = {
  ddply(df1, .(team, lg), mutate ,
        yoy = c(NA, diff(ab)))
}, WITHIN = {
  within(df1, {
    yoy <- ave(ab, team, lg, FUN = function(x) c(NA, diff(x)))
  })
}, columns = c("test", "replications", "elapsed", 
               "relative", "user.self"))
#     test replications elapsed relative user.self
# 1  DDPLY          100  10.675    4.974    10.609
# 2 WITHIN          100   2.146    1.000     2.128

Update: data.table

If your data are very large, check out data.table. Even with this example, you'll find a good speedup in relative terms. Plus the syntax is super compact and, in my opinion, easily readable.

library(plyr)
df1 <- aggregate(ab~year+lg+team, FUN=sum, data=baseball)
library(data.table)
DT <- data.table(df1)
DT
#       year lg team   ab
#    1: 1884 UA  ALT  108
#    2: 1997 AL  ANA 1703
#    3: 1998 AL  ANA 1502
#    4: 1999 AL  ANA  660
#    5: 2000 AL  ANA   85
#   ---                  
# 2523: 1895 NL  WSN  839
# 2524: 1896 NL  WSN  982
# 2525: 1897 NL  WSN 1426
# 2526: 1898 NL  WSN 1736
# 2527: 1899 NL  WSN  787

Now, look at this concise solution:

DT[, yoy := c(NA, diff(ab)), by = "team,lg"]
DT
#       year lg team   ab  yoy
#    1: 1884 UA  ALT  108   NA
#    2: 1997 AL  ANA 1703   NA
#    3: 1998 AL  ANA 1502 -201
#    4: 1999 AL  ANA  660 -842
#    5: 2000 AL  ANA   85 -575
#   ---                       
# 2523: 1895 NL  WSN  839  290
# 2524: 1896 NL  WSN  982  143
# 2525: 1897 NL  WSN 1426  444
# 2526: 1898 NL  WSN 1736  310
# 2527: 1899 NL  WSN  787 -949