Question

I would like to ask you for help with my data frame. It is a vector of many phases and for every one we have names of variables. Lets say

vec<-data.frame(phase1= c("var1","var2","var3","var4","var5","var6"),     
                 phase2= c("var1","var3","var4","var2","var6","var5"),    
                 phase3= c("var4","var3","var2","var1","var6","var5"))

 vec
  phase1 phase2 phase3
1   var1   var1   var4
2   var2   var3   var3
3   var3   var4   var2
4   var4   var2   var1
5   var5   var6   var6
6   var6   var5   var5

Now, lets say we are interested for the first 3 rows and therefore the weight of variable in one of them is 1/3, zero otherwise. My function would ideally output sth like that:

          phase1 phase2 phase3
   var1   0.33   0.33    0
   var2   0.33   0       0.33
   var3   0.33   0.33    0.33
   var4   0      0.33    0.33
   var5   0      0       0
   var6   0      0       0

The function should also be applicable for the first 4, 5 or all 6 rows (ie the weights will change then).
Regards,
Alex

Answer 1

I believe you are looking for this:

n<-3
l<-dim(vec)[1]
wghts<-c(rep(1/n, n), rep(0, l-n))
result<-do.call(cbind, lapply(vec, function(curcol){
        wghts[match(curcol, vec$phase1)]
    }))

If need be, you could add:

rownames(result)<-vec$phase1