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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T03:03:19+00:00

I have the following data frame x <- read.table(text = id1 id2 val1 val2

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I have the following data frame

x <- read.table(text = "  id1 id2 val1 val2
1   a   x    1    9
2   a   x    2    4
3   a   y    3    5
4   a   y    4    9
5   b   x    1    7
6   b   y    4    4
7   b   x    3    9
8   b   y    2    8", header = TRUE)

I want to calculate the mean of val1 and val2 grouped by id1 and id2, and simultaneously count the number of rows for each id1-id2 combination. I can perform each calculation separately: 

# calculate mean
aggregate(. ~ id1 + id2, data = x, FUN = mean)

# count rows
aggregate(. ~ id1 + id2, data = x, FUN = length)

In order to do both calculations in one call, I tried

do.call("rbind", aggregate(. ~ id1 + id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) data.frame(m = mean(x), n = length(x))))

However, I get a garbled output along with a warning:

#     m   n
# id1 1   2
# id2 1   1
#     1.5 2
#     2   2
#     3.5 2
#     3   2
#     6.5 2
#     8   2
#     7   2
#     6   2
# Warning message:
#   In rbind(id1 = c(1L, 2L, 1L, 2L), id2 = c(1L, 1L, 2L, 2L), val1 = list( :
#   number of columns of result is not a multiple of vector length (arg 1)

I could use the plyr package, but my data set is quite large and plyr is very slow (almost unusable) when the size of the dataset grows.

How can I use aggregate or other functions to perform several calculations in one call?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can do it all in one step and get proper labeling:

    > aggregate(. ~ id1+id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) )
#   id1 id2 val1.mn val1.n val2.mn val2.n
# 1   a   x     1.5    2.0     6.5    2.0
# 2   b   x     2.0    2.0     8.0    2.0
# 3   a   y     3.5    2.0     7.0    2.0
# 4   b   y     3.0    2.0     6.0    2.0

    This creates a dataframe with two id columns and two matrix columns:

    str( aggregate(. ~ id1+id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) ) )
'data.frame':   4 obs. of  4 variables:
 $ id1 : Factor w/ 2 levels "a","b": 1 2 1 2
 $ id2 : Factor w/ 2 levels "x","y": 1 1 2 2
 $ val1: num [1:4, 1:2] 1.5 2 3.5 3 2 2 2 2
  ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
  .. ..$ : NULL
  .. ..$ : chr  "mn" "n"
 $ val2: num [1:4, 1:2] 6.5 8 7 6 2 2 2 2
  ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
  .. ..$ : NULL
  .. ..$ : chr  "mn" "n"

    As pointed out by @lord.garbage below, this can be converted to a dataframe with “simple” columns by using do.call(data.frame, ...)

    str( do.call(data.frame, aggregate(. ~ id1+id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) ) ) 
    )
'data.frame':   4 obs. of  6 variables:
 $ id1    : Factor w/ 2 levels "a","b": 1 2 1 2
 $ id2    : Factor w/ 2 levels "x","y": 1 1 2 2
 $ val1.mn: num  1.5 2 3.5 3
 $ val1.n : num  2 2 2 2
 $ val2.mn: num  6.5 8 7 6
 $ val2.n : num  2 2 2 2

    This is the syntax for multiple variables on the LHS:

    aggregate(cbind(val1, val2) ~ id1 + id2, data = x, FUN = function(x) c(mn = mean(x), n = length(x) ) )
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