How do I vectorize the ecdf function in R? - r

Question

I have a data frame that looks like this:
set.seed(42)
data <- runif(1000)
utility <- sample(c("abc","bcd","cde","def"),1000,replace=TRUE)
stage <- sample(c("vwx","wxy","xyz"),1000,replace=TRUE)
x <- data.frame(data,utility,stage)
head(x)
data utility stage
1 0.9148060 def xyz
2 0.9370754 abc wxy
3 0.2861395 def xyz
4 0.8304476 cde xyz
5 0.6417455 bcd xyz
6 0.5190959 abc xyz
and I want to generate cumulative distribution functions for the unique combinations of utility and stage. In my real application I'll end up generating about 100 cdfs but this random data will have 12 (4x3) unique combinations. But I'll be using each of those cdfs thousands of times, so I don't want to calculate the cdf on the fly each time. The ecdf() function works exactly as I'd like, except I'd need to vectorize it. The following code doesn't work, but it's the gist of what I'm trying to do:
ecdf_multiple <- function(x)
{
i=0
utilities <- levels(x$utilities)
stages <- levels(x$stages)
for(utility in utilities)
{
for(stage in stages)
{
i <- i + 1
y <- ecdf(x[x$utilities == utility & x$stage == stage,1])
# calculate ecdf for the unique util/stage combo
z[i] <- list(y,utility,stage)
# then assign it to a data element (list, data frame, json, whatever) note-this doesn't actually work
}
}
z # return value
}
so after running ecdf_multiple and assigning it to a variable, I'd reference that variable somehow by passing a value (for which I wanted the cdf), the utility and the stage.
Is there a way to vectorize the ecdf function (or use/build another) so that I can the output several times without neededing to generate distributions over and over?
-------Added to respond to #Pascal 's excellent suggestion.-------
How might one expand this to a more general case of taking "n" dimensions of categories? This is my stab, based on Pascal's case of two dimensions. Notice how I tried to assign "y":
set.seed(42)
data <- runif(1000)
utility <- sample(c("abc","bcd","cde","def"),1000,replace=TRUE)
stage <- sample(c("vwx","wxy","xyz"),1000,replace=TRUE)
openclose <- sample(c("open","close"),1000,replace=TRUE)
x <- data.frame(data,utility,stage,openclose)
numlabels <- length(names(x))-1
y <- split(x, list(x[,2:(numlabels+1)]))
l <- lapply(y,function(x) ecdf(x[,"data"]))
#execute
utility <- "abc"
stage <- "xyz"
openclose <- "close"
comb <- paste(utility, stage, openclose, sep = ".")
# call the function
l[[comb]](.25)
During the assignment of "y" above, I get this error message:
"Error in sort.list(y) : 'x' must be atomic for 'sort.list'
Have you called 'sort' on a list?"

Answer 1

The following might help:
# we create a list of criteria by excluding
# the first column of the data.frame
y <- split(x, as.list(x[,-1]))
l <- lapply(y, function(x) ecdf(x[,"data"]))
utility <- "abc"
stage <- "xyz"
comb <- paste(utility, stage, sep = ".")
l[[comb]](0.25)
# [1] 0.2613636
plot(l[[comb]])