using tidyverse; counting after and before change in value, within groups, generating new variables for each unique shift

Question

I am looking for a tidyverse-solution that can count occurrences of unique values of TF within groups, id in the data datatbl

Answer 1

Here is another tidyverse approach that uses dplyr, tidyr and zoo (used for its na.locf function) package:

Firstly, instead of dropping NAs in the TF column and then join back as all the other suggested approaches (including the data.table approach), I wrote a helper method here, that counts forward by chunks ignoring NAs;

forward_count <- function(v) {
    valid <- !is.na(v)
    valid_v <- v[valid]
    chunk_size = head(rle(valid_v)$lengths, -1)
    idx <- cumsum(chunk_size) + 1
    ones <- rep(1, length(valid_v))
    ones[idx] <- 1 - chunk_size
    v[valid] <- cumsum(ones)
    v
}

And it works as is required by count after the change:

v <- sample(c(NA, 0, 1), 15, replace = T)
v
# [1] NA NA NA  0  1 NA  1 NA  1  1  0  1  0  0  0
forward_count(v)
# [1] NA NA NA  1  1 NA  2 NA  3  4  1  1  1  2  3

Count before the change can be implemented by reverse the vector twice with this exact same function:

-rev(forward_count(rev(v)))
# [1] NA NA NA -1 -4 NA -3 NA -2 -1 -1 -1 -3 -2 -1

Now define the headers, count forward column as fd, count backward column as bd using dplyr package:

library(dplyr); library(tidyr); library(zoo);

tidy_method <- function(df) {
    df %>% 
        group_by(id) %>% 
        mutate(
            rle_id = cumsum(diff(na.locf(c(0, TF))) != 0),   # chunk id for constant TF
            PM_fd = if_else(                 # PM count after change headers
                rle_id == head(rle_id, 1), 
                "head", sprintf('PM%02d', rle_id)
            ), 
            PM_bd = if_else(                 # shift the header up as before change headers
                rle_id == tail(rle_id, 1), 
                "tail", sprintf('PM%02d', rle_id+1)
            ), 
            fd = forward_count(TF),             # after change count
            bd = -rev(forward_count(rev(TF))),  # before change count
            rn = seq_along(id)) %>%             # row number
        gather(key, value, PM_fd, PM_bd) %>%    # align headers with the count
        mutate(count_ = if_else(key == "PM_fd", fd, bd)) %>%
        select(-key) %>% spread(value, count_) %>%    # reshaper PM column as headers
        select(id, TF, rn, matches('PM')) %>%  # drop no longer needed columns
        arrange(id, rn) %>% select(-rn)
}

Timing compared with the data.table method:

Define the data.table method as:

dt_method <- function(df) {
    tmp_dt <- setDT(df)[, rn := .I][!is.na(TF)][, rl := rleid(TF), by = id][
        , c("up", "dn") := .(seq_len(.N), -rev(seq_len(.N))), by = .(id, rl)][]

    res_dt <- tmp_dt[tmp_dt[, seq_len(max(rl) - 1L), by = .(id)], on = .(id), allow.cartesian = TRUE][
        rl == V1, PM := dn][rl == V1 + 1L, PM := up][
            , dcast(.SD, id + TF + rn ~ sprintf("PM%02d", V1), value.var = "PM")][
                df, on = .(rn, id, TF)][, -"rn"]
    res_dt
}

Data: A medium sized data by repeating the sample data frame 200 times:

df_test <- bind_rows(rep(list(df), 200))

microbenchmark::microbenchmark(dt_method(df_test), tidy_method(df_test), times = 10)
#Unit: milliseconds
#                 expr       min        lq      mean    median        uq       max neval
#   dt_method(df_test) 2321.5852 2439.8393 2490.8583 2456.1118 2557.4423 2834.2399    10
# tidy_method(df_test)  402.3624  412.2838  437.0801  414.5655  418.6564  540.9667    10

Order the data.table method result by id and convert all column data types to numeric; the results from data.table approach and tidyverse are identical:

identical(
    as.data.frame(dt_method(df_test)[order(id), lapply(.SD, as.numeric)]), 
    as.data.frame(tidy_method(df_test))
)
# [1] TRUE