R | Mutate with condition for multiple columns - r

Question

I want to calculate the mean in a row if at least three out of six observations in the row are != NA. If four or more NA´s are present, the mean should show NA.
Example which gives me the mean, ignoring the NA´s:
require(dplyr)
a <- 1:10
b <- a+10
c <- a+20
d <- a+30
e <- a+40
f <- a+50
df <- data.frame(a,b,c,d,e,f)
df[2,c(1,3,4,6)] <- NA
df[5,c(1,4,6)] <- NA
df[8,c(1,2,5,6)] <- NA
df <- df %>% mutate(mean = rowMeans(df[,1:6], na.rm=TRUE))
I thought about the use of
case_when
but i´m not sure how to use it correctly:
df <- df %>% mutate(mean = case_when( ~ rowMeans(df[,1:6], na.rm=TRUE), TRUE ~ NA))

Answer 1

You can try a base R solution saving the number of non NA values in a new variable and then use ifelse() for the mean:
#Data
a <- 1:10
b <- a+10
c <- a+20
d <- a+30
e <- a+40
f <- a+50
df <- data.frame(a,b,c,d,e,f)
df[2,c(1,3,4,6)] <- NA
df[5,c(1,4,6)] <- NA
df[8,c(1,2,5,6)] <- NA
#Code
#Count number of non NA
df$count <- rowSums( !is.na( df [,1:6]))
#Compute mean
df$Mean <- ifelse(df$count>=3,rowMeans(df [,1:6],na.rm=T),NA)
Output:
a b c d e f count Mean
1 1 11 21 31 41 51 6 26.00000
2 NA 12 NA NA 42 NA 2 NA
3 3 13 23 33 43 53 6 28.00000
4 4 14 24 34 44 54 6 29.00000
5 NA 15 25 NA 45 NA 3 28.33333
6 6 16 26 36 46 56 6 31.00000
7 7 17 27 37 47 57 6 32.00000
8 NA NA 28 38 NA NA 2 NA
9 9 19 29 39 49 59 6 34.00000
10 10 20 30 40 50 60 6 35.00000

Answer 2

You could do:
library(dplyr)
df %>%
rowwise %>%
mutate(
mean = case_when(
sum(is.na(c_across())) < 4 ~ mean(c_across(), na.rm = TRUE),
TRUE ~ NA_real_)
) %>% ungroup()
Output:
# A tibble: 10 x 7
a b c d e f mean
<int> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 1 11 21 31 41 51 26
2 NA 12 NA NA 42 NA NA
3 3 13 23 33 43 53 28
4 4 14 24 34 44 54 29
5 NA 15 25 NA 45 NA 28.3
6 6 16 26 36 46 56 31
7 7 17 27 37 47 57 32
8 NA NA 28 38 NA NA NA
9 9 19 29 39 49 59 34
10 10 20 30 40 50 60 35
This is leveraging rowwise and c_across which basically means operating on row level, so you can use vectorized functions such as sum, mean etc. in their usual way (also with case_when).
c_across also has a cols argument where you can specify which columns you want to take into account. For example, if you'd like to take into account columns 1:6, you can specify this as:
df %>%
rowwise %>%
mutate(
mean = case_when(
sum(is.na(c_across(1:6))) < 4 ~ mean(c_across(), na.rm = TRUE),
TRUE ~ NA_real_)
) %>% ungroup()
Alternatively, if you'd e.g. like to take into account all columns except column number 2, you would do c_across(-2). You can also use column names, e.g. for the first example c_across(a:f) (all columns) or for the second c_across(-b) (all columns except b).
This is implemented internally in dplyr, but you could also do usual vector subsetting with taking the whole c_across() (which defaults to all columns, i.e. everything()) and do e.g. c_across()[1:6] or c_across()[-2].

Answer 3

We can create an index first and then do the assignment based on the index
i1 <- rowSums(!is.na(df)) >=3
df$Mean[i1] <- rowMeans(df[i1,], na.rm = TRUE)
df
# a b c d e f Mean
#1 1 11 21 31 41 51 26.00000
#2 NA 12 NA NA 42 NA NA
#3 3 13 23 33 43 53 28.00000
#4 4 14 24 34 44 54 29.00000
#5 NA 15 25 NA 45 NA 28.33333
#6 6 16 26 36 46 56 31.00000
#7 7 17 27 37 47 57 32.00000
#8 NA NA 28 38 NA NA NA
#9 9 19 29 39 49 59 34.00000
#10 10 20 30 40 50 60 35.00000