splitting in samples and operating on them - r

I am just beginning with R and I have a beginner's question.
I have the following data frame (simplified):
Time: 00:01:00 00:02:00 00:03:00 00:04:00 ....
Flow: 2 4 5 1 ....
I would like to know the mean flow every two minutes instead of every minute. I need this for many hours of data.
I want to save those new means in a list. How can I do this using an apply function?

I assume you have continuous data without gaps, with values for Flow for every minute.
In base R we can use aggregate:
df.out <- data.frame(Time = df[seq(0, nrow(df) - 1, 2) + 1, "Time"]);
df.out$mean_2min = aggregate(
df$Flow,
by = list(rep(seq(1, nrow(df) / 2), each = 2)),
FUN = mean)[, 2];
df.out;
# Time mean_2min
#1 00:01:00 3
#2 00:03:00 3
Explanation: Extract only the odd rows from df; aggregate values in column Flow by every 2 rows, and store the mean in column mean_2min.
Sample data
df <- data.frame(
Time = c("00:01:00", "00:02:00", "00:03:00", "00:04:00"),
Flow = c(2, 4, 5, 1))

You can create a new variable in your data by using rounding your time variable to the closest two minutes below, then use a data table function to calculate the mean for your new minutes.
In order to help you precisely, you're gonna have to point out how your data is set up. If, for instance, your data is set up like this:
dt = data.table(Time = c(0:3), Flow = c(2,4,5,1))
Then the following would work for you:
dt[, twomin := floor(Time/2)*2]
dt[, mean(Flow), by = twomin]

Related

adjust "width" argument in rollapply() function in r for discontinuous dates

I have a dataset of daily remotely sensed data. In short, it's reflectance (values between 0 and 1) for the last 20 years. Because it's remotely sensed data, some dates do not have a value because of clouds or some other obstruction.
I want to use rollapply() in R's zoo package to detect in the time series when the values remain at 1.0 for a certain amount of time (let's say 2 weeks) or at 0 for that same amount of time.
I have code to do this, but the width argument in the rollapply() function (the 2-week threshold mentioned in the previous paragraph) looks at data points rather than time. So it looks at 14 data values rather than 14 days, which may span over a month due to the missing data values from cloud cover etc.
Here's an example:
test_data <- data.frame(date = c("2000-01-01", "2000-01-02", "2000-01-03", "2000-01-17", "2000-01-18"),
value = c(0, 1, 1, 1, 0))
test_data$date <- ymd(test_data$date)
select_first_1_value <- test_data %>%
mutate(value = rollapply(value, width = 3, min, align = "left", fill = NA, na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
filter(value == 1) %>%
filter(row_number() == 1) %>%
ungroup
With the argument as width = 3, it works. It finds that 2000-01-02 is the first date where a value = 1 occurs for at least 3 values. However, if I change this to 14, it no longer works, because it only sees 5 values in this instance. Even if I wrote out an additional 10 values that equal 1 (for a total of 15), it would be incorrect because the value = 0 at 2000-01-18 and it is only counting data points and not dates.
But when we look at the dates, there are missing dates between 2000-01-03 and 2000-01-17. If both are a value = 1, then I want to extract 2000-01-02 as the first instance where the time series remains at 1 for at least 14 consecutive days. Here, I'm assuming that the values are 1 for the missing days.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
There really are two problems here:
How to roll by date rather than number of points.
how to find the first stretch of 14 days of 1's assuming that missing dates are 1.
Note that (2) is not readily solved by (1) because the start of the first series of ones may not be any of the listed dates! For example, suppose we change the first date to Dec 1, 1999 giving test_data2 below. Then the start of the first period of 14 ones is Dec 2, 1999. It is not any of the dates in the test_data2 series.
test_data2 <- data.frame(
date = c("1999-12-01", "2000-01-02", "2000-01-03", "2000-01-17", "2000-01-18"),
value = c(0, 1, 1, 1, 0))
1) What we need to do is not roll by date but rather expand the series to fill in the missing dates giving zz and then use rollapply. Below do that by creating a zoo series (which also converts the dates to Date class) and then convert that to ts class. Because ts class can only represent regularly spaced series that conversion will fill in the missing dates and provide a value of NA for them. We can fill those in with 1 and then convert back to zoo with Date class index.
library(zoo)
z <- read.zoo(test_data2)
zz <- z |> as.ts() |> na.fill(1) |> as.zoo() |> aggregate(as.Date)
r <- rollapply(zz, 14, min, na.rm = TRUE, partial = TRUE, align = "left")
time(r)[which(r == 1)[1]]
## [1] "1999-12-02"
2) Another way to solve this not involving rollapply at all would be to use rle. Using zz from above
ok <- with(rle(coredata(zz)), rep(lengths >= 14 & values == 1, lengths))
tt[which(ok)[1]]
## [1] "1999-12-02"
3) Another way without using rollapply is to extract the 0 value rows and then keep only those whose difference exceeds 14 days from the next 0 value row. Finally take the first such row and use the date one day after it. This assumes that there is at least one 0 row before the first run of 14+ ones. Below we have returned back to using test_data from the question although this would have also worked with test_data2.
library(dplyr)
test_data %>%
mutate(date = as.Date(date)) %>%
filter(value == 0) %>%
mutate(diff = as.numeric(lead(date) - date)) %>%
filter(diff > 14) %>%
head(1) %>%
mutate(date = date + 1)
## date value diff
## 1 2000-01-02 0 17
rollapply over dates rather than points
4) The question also discussed using rollapply over dates rather than points which we address here. As noted above this does not actually solve the question of finding the first stretch of 14+ ones so instead we show how to find the first date in the series which starts a stretch of at least 14 ones. In general, we do this by first calculating a width vector using findInterval and then use rollapply in the usual way but with those widths rather than using a scalar width. This only involves one extra line of code to calculate the widths, w.
# using test_data from question
tt <- as.Date(test_data$date)
w <- findInterval(tt + 13, tt, rightmost.closed = TRUE) - seq_along(tt) + 1
r <- rollapply(test_data$value, w, min, fill = NA, na.rm = TRUE, align = "left")
tt[which(r == 1)[1]]
## [1] "2000-01-02"
There are further examples in ?rollapply showing how to roll by time rather than number of points.
sqldf
5) A completely different way of approaching the problem of finding the first 14+ ones with a date in the series is to use an SQL self join. It joins the first instance of test aliased to a to a second instance b associating all rows of b within the indicated date range and of a taking the minimum value of those creating a new column min14 with those minimums. The having clause then keeps only those rows for which min14 is 1 and of those the limit clause keeps the first. We then extract the date at the end.
library(sqldf)
test <- transform(test_data, date = as.Date(date))
sqldf("select a.*, min(b.value) min14
from test a
left join test b on b.date between a.date and a.date + 13
group by a.rowid
having min14 = 1
limit 1")$date
## [1] "2000-01-02"
You may look into runner package where you can pass k as days/weeks etc. See this example, to sum the last 3 days of value.
library(dplyr)
library(runner)
test_data %>%
mutate(date = as.Date(date),
sum_val = runner(value, k = "3 days", idx = date, f = sum))
# date value sum_val
#1 2000-01-01 0 0
#2 2000-01-02 1 1
#3 2000-01-03 1 2
#4 2000-01-17 1 1
#5 2000-01-18 0 1
Notice row 4 has value 1 (and not 3) because there is only 1 value that occurred in last 3 days.

Optimising subsetting with for loop in R

I'm using R and RStudio to analyse GTFS public transport feeds and to create timetable range plots using ggplot2. The code currently works fine but is quite slow, which is problematic when working with very big CSVs as is often the case here.
The slowest part of the code is as follows (with some context): a for loop that iterates through the data frame and subsets each unique trip into a temporary data frame from which the extreme arrival and departure values (first & last rows) are extracted:
# Creates an empty df to contain trip_id, trip start and trip end times
Trip_Times <- data.frame(Trip_ID = character(), Departure = character(), Arrival = character(), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
# Creates a vector containing all trips of the analysed day
unique_trips = unique(stop_times$trip_id)
# Iterates through stop_times for each unique trip_id and populates previously created data frame
for (i in seq(from = 1, to = length(unique_trips), by = 1)) {
temp_df <- subset(stop_times, trip_id == unique_trips[i])
Trip_Times[nrow(Trip_Times) + 1, ] <- c(temp_df$trip_id[[1]], temp_df$departure_time[[1]], temp_df$arrival_time[[nrow(temp_df)]])
}
The stop_times df looks as follows with some feeds containing over 2.5 million lines giving around 200k unique trips, hence 200k loop iterations...
head(stop_times)
trip_id arrival_time departure_time stop_sequence
1 011_0840101_A14 7:15:00 7:15:00 1
2 011_0840101_A14 7:16:00 7:16:00 2
3 011_0840101_A14 7:17:00 7:17:00 3
4 011_0840101_A14 7:18:00 7:18:00 4
5 011_0840101_A14 7:19:00 7:19:00 5
6 011_0840101_A14 7:20:00 7:20:00 6
Would anyone be able to advise me how to optimise this code in order to obtain faster results. I don't believe apply can be used here but I may well be wrong.
This should be straightforward with dplyr...
library(dplyr)
Trip_Times <- stop_times %>%
group_by(trip_id) %>%
summarise(departure_time=first(departure_time),
arrival_time=last(arrival_time))
We can use data.table
library(data.table)
setDT(stop_times)[, .(departure_time = departure_time[1L],
arrival_time = arrival_time[.N]) , by = trip_id]

Create 10,000 date data.frames with fake years based on 365 days window

Here my time period range:
start_day = as.Date('1974-01-01', format = '%Y-%m-%d')
end_day = as.Date('2014-12-21', format = '%Y-%m-%d')
df = as.data.frame(seq(from = start_day, to = end_day, by = 'day'))
colnames(df) = 'date'
I need to created 10,000 data.frames with different fake years of 365days each one. This means that each of the 10,000 data.frames needs to have different start and end of year.
In total df has got 14,965 days which, divided by 365 days = 41 years. In other words, df needs to be grouped 10,000 times differently by 41 years (of 365 days each one).
The start of each year has to be random, so it can be 1974-10-03, 1974-08-30, 1976-01-03, etc... and the remaining dates at the end df need to be recycled with the starting one.
The grouped fake years need to appear in a 3rd col of the data.frames.
I would put all the data.frames into a list but I don't know how to create the function which generates 10,000 different year's start dates and subsequently group each data.frame with a 365 days window 41 times.
Can anyone help me?
#gringer gave a good answer but it solved only 90% of the problem:
dates.df <- data.frame(replicate(10000, seq(sample(df$date, 1),
length.out=365, by="day"),
simplify=FALSE))
colnames(dates.df) <- 1:10000
What I need is 10,000 columns with 14,965 rows made by dates taken from df which need to be eventually recycled when reaching the end of df.
I tried to change length.out = 14965 but R does not recycle the dates.
Another option could be to change length.out = 1 and eventually add the remaining df rows for each column by maintaining the same order:
dates.df <- data.frame(replicate(10000, seq(sample(df$date, 1),
length.out=1, by="day"),
simplify=FALSE))
colnames(dates.df) <- 1:10000
How can I add the remaining df rows to each col?
The seq method also works if the to argument is unspecified, so it can be used to generate a specific number of days starting at a particular date:
> seq(from=df$date[20], length.out=10, by="day")
[1] "1974-01-20" "1974-01-21" "1974-01-22" "1974-01-23" "1974-01-24"
[6] "1974-01-25" "1974-01-26" "1974-01-27" "1974-01-28" "1974-01-29"
When used in combination with replicate and sample, I think this will give what you want in a list:
> replicate(2,seq(sample(df$date, 1), length.out=10, by="day"), simplify=FALSE)
[[1]]
[1] "1985-07-24" "1985-07-25" "1985-07-26" "1985-07-27" "1985-07-28"
[6] "1985-07-29" "1985-07-30" "1985-07-31" "1985-08-01" "1985-08-02"
[[2]]
[1] "2012-10-13" "2012-10-14" "2012-10-15" "2012-10-16" "2012-10-17"
[6] "2012-10-18" "2012-10-19" "2012-10-20" "2012-10-21" "2012-10-22"
Without the simplify=FALSE argument, it produces an array of integers (i.e. R's internal representation of dates), which is a bit trickier to convert back to dates. A slightly more convoluted way to do this is and produce Date output is to use data.frame on the unsimplified replicate result. Here's an example that will produce a 10,000-column data frame with 365 dates in each column (takes about 5s to generate on my computer):
dates.df <- data.frame(replicate(10000, seq(sample(df$date, 1),
length.out=365, by="day"),
simplify=FALSE));
colnames(dates.df) <- 1:10000;
> dates.df[1:5,1:5];
1 2 3 4 5
1 1988-09-06 1996-05-30 1987-07-09 1974-01-15 1992-03-07
2 1988-09-07 1996-05-31 1987-07-10 1974-01-16 1992-03-08
3 1988-09-08 1996-06-01 1987-07-11 1974-01-17 1992-03-09
4 1988-09-09 1996-06-02 1987-07-12 1974-01-18 1992-03-10
5 1988-09-10 1996-06-03 1987-07-13 1974-01-19 1992-03-11
To get the date wraparound working, a slight modification can be made to the original data frame, pasting a copy of itself on the end:
df <- as.data.frame(c(seq(from = start_day, to = end_day, by = 'day'),
seq(from = start_day, to = end_day, by = 'day')));
colnames(df) <- "date";
This is easier to code for downstream; the alternative being a double seq for each result column with additional calculations for the start/end and if statements to deal with boundary cases.
Now instead of doing date arithmetic, the result columns subset from the original data frame (where the arithmetic is already done). Starting with one date in the first half of the frame and choosing the next 14965 values. I'm using nrow(df)/2 instead for a more generic code:
dates.df <-
as.data.frame(lapply(sample.int(nrow(df)/2, 10000),
function(startPos){
df$date[startPos:(startPos+nrow(df)/2-1)];
}));
colnames(dates.df) <- 1:10000;
>dates.df[c(1:5,(nrow(dates.df)-5):nrow(dates.df)),1:5];
1 2 3 4 5
1 1988-10-21 1999-10-18 2009-04-06 2009-01-08 1988-12-28
2 1988-10-22 1999-10-19 2009-04-07 2009-01-09 1988-12-29
3 1988-10-23 1999-10-20 2009-04-08 2009-01-10 1988-12-30
4 1988-10-24 1999-10-21 2009-04-09 2009-01-11 1988-12-31
5 1988-10-25 1999-10-22 2009-04-10 2009-01-12 1989-01-01
14960 1988-10-15 1999-10-12 2009-03-31 2009-01-02 1988-12-22
14961 1988-10-16 1999-10-13 2009-04-01 2009-01-03 1988-12-23
14962 1988-10-17 1999-10-14 2009-04-02 2009-01-04 1988-12-24
14963 1988-10-18 1999-10-15 2009-04-03 2009-01-05 1988-12-25
14964 1988-10-19 1999-10-16 2009-04-04 2009-01-06 1988-12-26
14965 1988-10-20 1999-10-17 2009-04-05 2009-01-07 1988-12-27
This takes a bit less time now, presumably because the date values have been pre-caclulated.
Try this one, using subsetting instead:
start_day = as.Date('1974-01-01', format = '%Y-%m-%d')
end_day = as.Date('2014-12-21', format = '%Y-%m-%d')
date_vec <- seq.Date(from=start_day, to=end_day, by="day")
Now, I create a vector long enough so that I can use easy subsetting later on:
date_vec2 <- rep(date_vec,2)
Now, create the random start dates for 100 instances (replace this with 10000 for your application):
random_starts <- sample(1:14965, 100)
Now, create a list of dates by simply subsetting date_vec2 with your desired length:
dates <- lapply(random_starts, function(x) date_vec2[x:(x+14964)])
date_df <- data.frame(dates)
names(date_df) <- 1:100
date_df[1:5,1:5]
1 2 3 4 5
1 1997-05-05 2011-12-10 1978-11-11 1980-09-16 1989-07-24
2 1997-05-06 2011-12-11 1978-11-12 1980-09-17 1989-07-25
3 1997-05-07 2011-12-12 1978-11-13 1980-09-18 1989-07-26
4 1997-05-08 2011-12-13 1978-11-14 1980-09-19 1989-07-27
5 1997-05-09 2011-12-14 1978-11-15 1980-09-20 1989-07-28

Count rows based on multiple consecutive time flows

I have a large file of time-series data, which looks as follows. The dataset covers years, in increments of 15 minutes. A small subset looks like:
uniqueid time
a 2014-04-30 23:30:00
a 2014-04-30 23:45:00
a 2014-05-01 00:00:00
a 2014-05-01 00:15:00
a 2014-05-12 13:45:00
a 2014-05-12 14:00:00
b 2014-05-12 13:45:00
b 2014-05-12 14:00:00
b 2014-05-12 14:30:00
To reproduce above:
time<-c("2014-04-30 23:30:00","2014-04-30 23:45:00","2014-05-01 00:00:00","2014-05-01 00:15:00",
"2014-05-12 13:45:00","2014-05-12 14:00:00","2014-05-12 13:45:00","2014-05-12 14:00:00",
"2014-05-12 14:30:00")
uniqueid<-c("a","a","a","a","a","a","b","b","b")
mydf<-data.frame(uniqueid,time)
My goal is to count the number of rows per unique id, per consecutive timeflow. A consecutive timespan is when a unique id is stamped for each 15 minutes in a row (such as id A, which is stamped from 30.04.14 23.30 hrs until 01.05.14 00.15 hrs - hence 4 rows), yet when this flow of 15-minute iterations is disrupted (after 01.05.14 00:15, it is not stamped at 01.05.14 00:30 hence it is disrupted), it should count the next timestamp as start of a new consecutive timeflow and again calculate the number of rows until this flow is disrupted again. Time is POSIX.
As you can see in above example; a consecutive timeflow may cover different days, different months, or different years. I have many unique ids (and as said, a very large file), so I'm looking for a way that my computer can handle (loops probably wouldn't work).
I am looking for output something like:
uniqueid flow number_rows
a 1 4
a 2 2
b 3 2
b 4 1
I have looked into some time packages (such as lubridate), but given my limited R knowledge, I don't even know where to begin.
I hope all is clear - if not, I'd be happy to try to clarify it further. Thank you very much in advance!
Another way to do this with data.table also using a time difference would be to make use of the data.table internal values for group number and number of rows in each group:
library(data.table)
res<-setDT(mydf)[, list(number_rows=.N,flow=.GRP),
by=.(uniqueid,cumsum(as.numeric(difftime(time,shift(time,1L,type="lag",fill=0))) - 15))][,cumsum:=NULL]
print(res)
uniqueid number_rows flow
1: a 4 1
2: a 2 2
3: b 2 3
4: b 1 4
Also since the sample data you posted didn't align with the subset you posted, I have included my data below:
Data
time<-as.POSIXct(c("2014-04-30 23:30:00","2014-04-30 23:45:00","2014-05-01 00:00:00","2014-05-01 00:15:00",
"2014-05-12 13:45:00","2014-05-12 14:00:00","2014-05-12 13:45:00","2014-05-12 14:00:00",
"2014-05-12 14:30:00"))
uniqueid<-c("a","a","a","a","a","a","b","b","b")
mydf<-data.frame(uniqueid,time)
You can groupby the uniqueid and the cumulative sum of the difference of time between rows which is not equal to 15 min and that gives the flow id and then a count of rows should give you what you need:
A justification of the logic is whenever the time difference is not equal to 15 within each uniqueid, a new flow process should be generated so we label it as TRUE and combine that with the cumsum, it becomes a new flow id with the following consecutive rows:
library(dplyr)
mydf$time <- as.POSIXct(mydf$time, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
# convert the time column to POSIXct class so that we can apply the diff function correctly
mydf %>% group_by(uniqueid, flow = 1 + cumsum(c(F, diff(time) != 15))) %>%
summarize(num_rows = n())
# Source: local data frame [4 x 3]
# Groups: uniqueid [?]
#
# uniqueid flow num_rows
# <fctr> <dbl> <int>
# 1 a 1 4
# 2 a 2 2
# 3 b 3 2
# 4 b 4 1
Base R is pretty fast. Using crude benchmarking, I found it finished in half the time of DT, and I got tired of waiting for dplyr.
# estimated size of data, years x days x hours x 15mins x uniqueids
5*365*24*4*1000 # = approx 180M
# make data with posixct and characters of 180M rows, mydf is approx 2.5GB in memory
time<-rep(as.POSIXct(c("2014-04-30 23:30:00","2014-04-30 23:45:00","2014-05-01 00:00:00","2014-05-01 00:15:00",
"2014-05-12 13:45:00","2014-05-12 14:00:00","2014-05-12 13:45:00","2014-05-12 14:00:00",
"2014-05-12 14:30:00")),times = 20000000)
uniqueid<-rep(as.character(c("a","a","a","a","a","a","b","b","b")),times = 20000000)
mydf<-data.frame(uniqueid,time = time)
rm(time,uniqueid);gc()
Base R:
# assumes that uniqueid's are in groups and in order, and there won't be a followed by b that have the 15 minute "flow"
starttime <- Sys.time()
# find failed flows
mydf$diff <- c(0,diff(mydf$time))
mydf$flowstop <- mydf$diff != 15
# give each flow an id
mydf$flowid <- cumsum(mydf$flowstop)
# clean up vars
mydf$time <- mydf$diff <- mydf$flowstop <- NULL
# find flow length
mydfrle <- rle(mydf$flowid)
# get uniqueid/flowid pairs (unique() is too slow)
mydf <- mydf[!duplicated(mydf$flowid), ]
# append rle and remove separate var
mydf$number_rows <- mydfrle$lengths
rm(mydfrle)
print(Sys.time()-starttime)
# Time difference of 30.39437 secs
data.table:
library(data.table)
starttime <- Sys.time()
res<-setDT(mydf)[, list(number_rows=.N,flow=.GRP),
by=.(uniqueid,cumsum(as.numeric(difftime(time,shift(time,1L,type="lag",fill=0))) - 15))][,cumsum:=NULL]
print(Sys.time()-starttime)
# Time difference of 57.08156 secs
dplyr:
library(dplyr)
# convert the time column to POSIXct class so that we can apply the diff function correctly
starttime <- Sys.time()
mydf %>% group_by(uniqueid, flow = 1 + cumsum(c(F, diff(time) != 15))) %>%
summarize(num_rows = n())
print(Sys.time()-starttime)
# too long, did not finish after a few minutes
I think the assumption of uniqueid's and times being in order is huge, and the other solutions might be able to take advantage of that better. order() is easy enough to do.
I'm not sure about the impact of memory, or of the impact of different data sets that aren't so simple. It should be easy enough to break it into chunks and process if memory is an issue. It takes more code in Base R for sure.
Having both ordered "id" and "time" columns, we could build a single group to operate on by creating a logical vector of indices wherever either "id" changes or "time" is > 15 minutes.
With:
id = as.character(mydf$uniqueid)
tm = mydf$time
find where "id":
id_gr = c(TRUE, id[-1] != id[-length(id)])
and "time":
tm_gr = c(0, difftime(tm[-1], tm[-length(tm)], unit = "mins")) > 15
change and combine them in:
gr = id_gr | tm_gr
which shows wherever either "id" changed or "time" > 15.
And to get the result:
tab = tabulate(cumsum(gr)) ## basically, the only operation per group -- 'n by group'
data.frame(id = id[gr], flow = seq_along(tab), n = tab)
# id flow n
#1 a 1 4
#2 a 2 2
#3 b 3 2
#4 b 4 1
On a larger scale:
set.seed(1821); nid = 1e4
dat = replicate(nid, as.POSIXct("2016-07-07 12:00:00 EEST") +
cumsum(sample(c(1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 150, 200, 250, 300), sample(5e2:1e3, 1), TRUE)*60),
simplify = FALSE)
names(dat) = make.unique(rep_len(letters, nid))
dat = data.frame(id = rep(names(dat), lengths(dat)), time = do.call(c, dat))
system.time({
id = as.character(dat$id); tm = dat$time
id_gr = c(TRUE, id[-1] != id[-length(id)])
tm_gr = c(0, difftime(tm[-1], tm[-length(tm)], unit = "mins")) > 15
gr = id_gr | tm_gr
tab = tabulate(cumsum(gr))
ans1 = data.frame(id = id[gr], flow = seq_along(tab), n = tab)
})
# user system elapsed
# 1.44 0.19 1.66
For comparison, included MikeyMike's answer:
library(data.table)
dat2 = copy(dat)
system.time({
ans2 = setDT(dat2)[, list(flow = .GRP, n = .N),
by = .(id, cumsum(as.numeric(difftime(time,
shift(time, 1L, type = "lag", fill = 0),
unit = "mins")) > 15))][, cumsum := NULL]
})
# user system elapsed
# 3.95 0.22 4.26
identical(as.data.table(ans1), ans2)
#[1] TRUE

Mean value between dates based on dates in another dataset using R

I have two data frames "Conc" and "Flow".
Flow has a value for every day for a set period, whereas Conc only has a value on certain days over the period of the period.
What I want to be able to do is calculate the mean Flow values for each period in between the Conc values using r.
The following code will generate two example data frames to illustrate the kind of datasets I am working with:
Conc <- data.frame(Date = as.Date(c("2012/01/13", "2012/02/16", "2012/05/02", "2012/07/28",
"2012/11/10")), Conc = c(0.88, 0.55, 0.34, 0.21, 0.98))
Flow <- data.frame(Date = c(seq(as.Date("2012/01/01"), by = "day", length.out = 365)),
Flow = c(sample(seq(from = 0.01, to = 5, by = 0.1), size = 365, replace = TRUE)))
The output data frame would ideally be something like:
Period Mean_Flow
1 2.01
2 1.41
3 3.81
4 0.31
I appreciate the variable time between Conc days makes this tricky. At present the best I have been to come up with is to manually do this in excel but I would really like to find an R solution to save myself having to do this for about 10 different dataset that I have.
Thank you.
Here's a possible approach using data.table package foverlaps function:
Create time intervals in both data sets
library(data.table)
Conc <- setDT(Conc)[, `:=`(start = Date, end = c(Date[2:(.N - 1)] - 1, Date[.N], NA))][-.N]
Flow <- setDT(Flow)[, `:=`(start = Date, end = Date)]
Key the Flow data set in order to use foverlaps function and run the function
setkey(Flow, start, end)
overlaps <- foverlaps(Conc, Flow, type = "any", which = TRUE)
Create indexes of the overlaps within the Flow data set and compute the mean by those indexes
Flow[overlaps$yid, Period := overlaps$xid]
na.omit(Flow[, list(Mean_Flow = mean(Flow)), by = Period])
# Period Mean_Flow
# 1: 1 2.189412
# 2: 2 2.263947
# 3: 3 2.762874
# 4: 4 2.349048
The following uses a loop going along all available dates in Conc$Date.
Conc$Date is for convenience put in vector A. The variable p signifies the values that should be taken into account. The loop stops with a NaN as the loop surpasses the last given date.
A <- Conc$Date
for(i in 1:length(A))
{p <- which(Flow$Date>A[i] & Flow$Date<A[i+1])
M<-mean(Flow$Flow[p])
print(M)}

Resources