Summing depth data (consecutive rows) in R - r

Question

How is it possible with to sum up consecutive depth data with R?
For instance:
a <- data.frame(label = as.factor(c("Air","Air","Air","Air","Air","Air","Wood","Wood","Wood","Wood","Wood","Air","Air","Air","Air","Stone","Stone","Stone","Stone","Air","Air","Air","Air","Air","Wood","Wood")),
depth = as.numeric(c(1,2,3,-1,4,5,4,5,4,6,8,9,8,9,10,9,10,11,10,11,12,10,12,13,14,14)))
The given output should be something like:
Label Depth
Air 7
Wood 3
Stone 1
First the removal of negative values is done with cummax(), because depth can only increase in this special case. Hence:
label depth
1 Air 1
2 Air 2
3 Air 3
4 Air 3
5 Air 4
6 Air 5
7 Wood 5
8 Wood 5
9 Wood 5
10 Wood 6
11 Wood 8
12 Air 9
13 Air 9
14 Air 9
15 Air 10
16 Stone 10
17 Stone 10
18 Stone 11
19 Stone 11
20 Air 11
21 Air 12
22 Air 12
23 Air 12
24 Air 13
25 Wood 14
26 Wood 14
Now by max-min the increase in depth for every consecutive row you would get: (the question is how to do this step)
label depth
1 Air 4
2 Wood 3
3 Air 1
4 Stone 1
5 Air 2
5 Wood 0
And finally summing up those max-min values the output is the one presented above.
Steps tried to achieve the output:
The first obvious solution would be for instance for Air:
diff(cummax(a[a$label=="Air",]$depth))
This solution gets rid of the negative data, which is necessary due to an expected constant increase in depth.
The problem is the output also takes into account the big steps in between each consecutive subset. Hence, the sum for Air would be 12 instead of 7.
[1] 1 1 0 1 1 4 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1
Even worse would be a solution with aggreagte, e.g.:
aggregate(depth~label, a, FUN=function(x){sum(x>0)})
Note: solutions with filtering big jumps is not what i'm looking for. Sure you could hard code a limit for instance <2 for the example of Air once again:
sum(diff(cummax(a[a$label=="Air",]$depth))[diff(cummax(a[a$label=="Air",]$depth))<2])
Gives you almost the right result but does not work as it is expected here. I'm pretty sure there is already a function for what I'm looking for because it is not a uncommon problem for many different tasks.
I guess taking the minimum and maximum value of each set of consecutive rows per material and summing those up would be one possible solution, but I'm not sure how to apply a function to only the consecutive subsets.

Answer 1

You can use data.table::rleid to quickly group by run, or reconstruct it with rle if you really like. After that, aggregating is fairly easy in any grammar. In dplyr,
library(dplyr)
a <- data.frame(label = c("Air","Air","Air","Air","Air","Air","Wood","Wood","Wood","Wood","Wood","Air","Air","Air","Air","Stone","Stone","Stone","Stone","Air","Air","Air","Air","Air","Wood","Wood"),
depth = c(1,2,3,-1,4,5,4,5,4,6,8,9,8,9,10,9,10,11,10,11,12,10,12,13,14,14))
a2 <- a %>%
# filter to rows where previous value is lower, equal, or NA
filter(depth >= lag(depth) | is.na(lag(depth))) %>%
# group by label and its run
group_by(label, run = data.table::rleid(label)) %>%
summarise(depth = max(depth) - min(depth)) # aggregate
a2 %>% arrange(run) # sort to make it pretty
#> # A tibble: 6 x 3
#> # Groups: label [3]
#> label run depth
#> <fctr> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 Air 1 4
#> 2 Wood 2 3
#> 3 Air 3 1
#> 4 Stone 4 1
#> 5 Air 5 2
#> 6 Wood 6 0
a3 <- a2 %>% summarise(depth = sum(depth)) # a2 is still grouped, so aggregate more
a3
#> # A tibble: 3 x 2
#> label depth
#> <fctr> <dbl>
#> 1 Air 7
#> 2 Stone 1
#> 3 Wood 3

Answer 2

A base R method using aggregate is
aggregate(cbind(val=cummax(a$depth)),
list(label=a$label, ID=c(0, cumsum(diff(as.integer(a$label)) != 0))),
function(x) diff(range(x)))
The first argument to aggregate calculates the cumulative maximum as the OP does above for the input vector, the use of cbind provide for the final output of the calculated vector. The second argument is the grouping argument. This uses a different method than rle, which calculates the cumulative sum of the differences. Finally, the third argument provides the function which calculates the desired output by taking a difference of the range for each group.
This returns
label ID val
1 Air 0 4
2 Wood 1 3
3 Air 2 1
4 Stone 3 1
5 Air 4 2
6 Wood 5 0

Answer 3

The data.table way (borrowing in part from #alistaire):
setDT(a)
a[, depth := cummax(depth)]
depth_gain <- a[,
list(
depth = max(depth) - depth[1], # Only need the starting and max values
label = label[1]
),
by = rleidv(label)
]
result <- depth_gain[, list(depth = sum(depth)), by = label]