Use dynamically generated column names in dplyr - r

Question

I have a data frame with multiple columns, the user provides a vector with the column names, and I want to count maximum amount of times an element appears
set.seed(42)
df <- tibble(
var1 = sample(c(1:3),10,replace=T),
var2 = sample(c(1:3),10,replace=T),
var3 = sample(c(1:3),10,replace=T)
)
select_vars <- c("var1", "var3")
df %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(consensus=max(table(unlist(c(var1,var3)))))
# A tibble: 10 x 4
# Rowwise:
var1 var2 var3 consensus
<int> <int> <int> <int>
1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 3 1
3 1 2 1 2
4 1 2 1 2
5 2 2 2 2
6 2 3 3 1
7 2 3 2 2
8 1 1 1 2
9 3 1 2 1
10 3 3 2 1
This does exactly what I want, but when I try to use a vector of variables i cant get it to work
df %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(consensus=max(unlist(table(select_vars)) )))

Answer 1

You can wrap it in c(!!! syms()) to get it working, and you don't need the unlist apparently. But honestly, I'm not sure what you are trying to do, and why table is needed here. Do you just want to check if var2 and var3 are the same value and if then 2 and if not then 1?
library(dplyr)
df <- tibble(
var1 = sample(c(1:3),10,replace=T),
var2 = sample(c(1:3),10,replace=T),
var3 = sample(c(1:3),10,replace=T)
)
select_vars <- c("var2", "var3")
df %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(consensus=max(table(c(!!!syms(select_vars)))))
#> # A tibble: 10 x 4
#> # Rowwise:
#> var1 var2 var3 consensus
#> <int> <int> <int> <int>
#> 1 2 3 2 1
#> 2 3 1 3 1
#> 3 3 1 1 2
#> 4 3 3 3 2
#> 5 1 1 2 1
#> 6 2 1 3 1
#> 7 3 2 3 1
#> 8 1 2 3 1
#> 9 2 1 2 1
#> 10 2 1 1 2
Created on 2021-07-22 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)

Answer 2

In the OP's code, we need select
library(dplyr)
df %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(consensus=max(table(unlist(select(cur_data(), select_vars))) ))
-output
# A tibble: 10 x 4
# Rowwise:
var1 var2 var3 consensus
<int> <int> <int> <int>
1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 3 1
3 1 2 1 2
4 1 2 1 2
5 2 2 2 2
6 2 3 3 1
7 2 3 2 2
8 1 1 1 2
9 3 1 2 1
10 3 3 2 1
Or just subset from cur_data() which would only return the data keeping the group attributes
df %>%
rowwise %>%
mutate(consensus = max(table(unlist(cur_data()[select_vars]))))
# A tibble: 10 x 4
# Rowwise:
var1 var2 var3 consensus
<int> <int> <int> <int>
1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 3 1
3 1 2 1 2
4 1 2 1 2
5 2 2 2 2
6 2 3 3 1
7 2 3 2 2
8 1 1 1 2
9 3 1 2 1
10 3 3 2 1
Or using pmap
library(purrr)
df %>%
mutate(consensus = pmap_dbl(cur_data()[select_vars], ~ max(table(c(...)))))
# A tibble: 10 x 4
var1 var2 var3 consensus
<int> <int> <int> <dbl>
1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 3 1
3 1 2 1 2
4 1 2 1 2
5 2 2 2 2
6 2 3 3 1
7 2 3 2 2
8 1 1 1 2
9 3 1 2 1
10 3 3 2 1
As these are rowwise operations, can get some efficiency if we use collapse functions
library(collapse)
tfm(df, consensus = dapply(slt(df, select_vars), MARGIN = 1,
FUN = function(x) fmax(tabulate(x))))
# A tibble: 10 x 4
var1 var2 var3 consensus
* <int> <int> <int> <int>
1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 3 1
3 1 2 1 2
4 1 2 1 2
5 2 2 2 2
6 2 3 3 1
7 2 3 2 2
8 1 1 1 2
9 3 1 2 1
10 3 3 2 1
Benchmarks
As noted above, collapse is faster (run on a slightly bigger dataset)
df1 <- df[rep(seq_len(nrow(df)), 1e5), ]
system.time({
tfm(df1, consensus = dapply(slt(df1, select_vars), MARGIN = 1,
FUN = function(x) fmax(tabulate(x))))
})
#user system elapsed
# 5.257 0.123 5.323
system.time({
df1 %>%
mutate(consensus = pmap_dbl(cur_data()[select_vars], ~ max(table(c(...)))))
})
#user system elapsed
# 54.813 0.517 55.246
The rowwise operation is taking too much time, so stopped the execution
df1 %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(consensus=max(table(unlist(select(cur_data(), select_vars))) ))
})
Timing stopped at: 575.5 3.342 581.3

Answer 3

What you need is to use the verb all_of
df %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(consensus=max(table(unlist(all_of(select_vars)))))
# A tibble: 10 x 4
# Rowwise:
var1 var2 var3 consensus
<int> <int> <int> <int>
1 2 3 3 1
2 2 2 2 1
3 1 2 2 1
4 2 3 3 1
5 1 2 1 1
6 2 1 2 1
7 2 2 2 1
8 3 1 2 1
9 2 1 3 1
10 3 2 1 1