What is the right way to multiply data frame by vector? - r

Question

I'm trying to multiply a data frame df by a vector v, so that the product is a data frame, where the i-th row is given by df[i,]*v. I can do this, for example, by
df <- data.frame(A=1:5, B=2:6); v <- c(0,2)
as.data.frame(t(t(df) * v))
A B
1 0 4
2 0 6
3 0 8
4 0 10
5 0 12
I am sure there has to be a more R-style approach (and a very simple one!), but nothing comes on my mind. I even tried something like
apply(df, MARGIN=1, function(x) x*v)
but still, non-readable constructions like as.data.frame(t(.)) are required.
How can I find an efficient and elegant workaround here?

Answer 1

This works too:
data.frame(mapply(`*`,df,v))
In that solution, you are taking advantage of the fact that data.frame is a type of list, so you can iterate over both the elements of df and v at the same time with mapply.
Unfortunately, you are limited in what you can output from mapply: as simple list, or a matrix. If your data are huge, this would likely be more efficient:
data.frame(mapply(`*`,df,v,SIMPLIFY=FALSE))
Because it would convert it to a list, which is more efficient to convert to a data.frame.

Answer 2

If you're looking for speed and memory efficiency - data.table to the rescue:
library(data.table)
dt = data.table(df)
for (i in seq_along(dt))
dt[, (i) := dt[[i]] * v[i]]
eddi = function(dt) { for (i in seq_along(dt)) dt[, (i) := dt[[i]] * v[i]] }
arun = function(df) { df * matrix(v, ncol=ncol(df), nrow=nrow(df), byrow=TRUE) }
nograpes = function(df) { data.frame(mapply(`*`,df,v,SIMPLIFY=FALSE)) }
N = 1e6
dt = data.table(A = rnorm(N), B = rnorm(N))
v = c(0,2)
microbenchmark(eddi(copy(dt)), arun(copy(dt)), nograpes(copy(dt)), times = 10)
#Unit: milliseconds
# expr min lq mean median uq max neval
# eddi(copy(dt)) 23.01106 24.31192 26.47132 24.50675 28.87794 34.28403 10
# arun(copy(dt)) 337.79885 363.72081 450.93933 433.21176 516.56839 644.70103 10
# nograpes(copy(dt)) 19.44873 24.30791 36.53445 26.00760 38.09078 95.41124 10
As Arun points out in the comments, one can also use the set function from the data.table package to do this in-place modification on data.frame's as well:
for (i in seq_along(df))
set(df, j = i, value = df[[i]] * v[i])
This of course also works for data.table's and could be significantly faster if the number of columns is large.

Answer 3

A language that lets you combine vectors with matrices has to make a decision at some point whether the matrices are row-major or column-major ordered. The reason:
> df * v
A B
1 0 4
2 4 0
3 0 8
4 8 0
5 0 12
is because R operates down the columns first. Doing the double-transpose trick subverts this. Sorry if this is just explaining what you know, but I don't know another way of doing it, except explicitly expanding v into a matrix of the same size.
Or write a nice function that wraps the not very R-style code into something that is R-stylish.

Answer 4

Whats wrong with
t(apply(df, 1, function(x)x*v))
?

Answer 5

library(purrr)
map2_dfc(df, v, `*`)
Benchmark
N = 1e6
dt = data.table(A = rnorm(N), B = rnorm(N))
v = c(0,2)
eddi = function(dt) { for (i in seq_along(dt)) dt[, (i) := dt[[i]] * v[i]]; dt }
arun = function(df) { df * matrix(v, ncol=ncol(df), nrow=nrow(df), byrow=TRUE) }
nograpes = function(df) { data.frame(mapply(`*`,df,v,SIMPLIFY=FALSE)) }
ryan = function(df) {map2_dfc(df, v, `*`) }
library(microbenchmark)
microbenchmark(
eddi(copy(dt))
, arun(copy(dt))
, nograpes(copy(dt))
, ryan(copy(dt))
, times = 100)
# Unit: milliseconds
# expr min lq mean median uq max neval
# eddi(copy(dt)) 8.367513 11.06719 24.26205 12.29132 19.35958 171.6212 100
# arun(copy(dt)) 94.031272 123.79999 186.42155 148.87042 251.56241 364.2193 100
# nograpes(copy(dt)) 7.910739 10.92815 27.68485 13.06058 21.39931 172.0798 100
# ryan(copy(dt)) 8.154395 11.02683 29.40024 13.73845 21.77236 181.0375 100

Answer 6

I think the fastest way (without testing data.table) is data.frame(t(t(df)*v)).
My tests:
testit <- function(nrow, ncol)
{
df <- as.data.frame(matrix(rnorm(nrow*ncol),nrow=nrow,ncol=ncol))
v <- runif(ncol)
r1 <- data.frame(t(t(df)*v))
r2 <- data.frame(mapply(`*`,df,v,SIMPLIFY=FALSE))
r3 <- df * rep(v, each=nrow(df))
stopifnot(identical(r1, r2) && identical(r1, r3))
microbenchmark(data.frame(t(t(df)*v)), data.frame(mapply(`*`,df,v,SIMPLIFY=FALSE)), df * rep(v, each=nrow(df)))
}
Result
> set.seed(1)
>
> testit(100,100)
Unit: milliseconds
expr min lq median uq max neval
data.frame(t(t(df) * v)) 2.297075 2.359541 2.455778 3.804836 33.05806 100
data.frame(mapply(`*`, df, v, SIMPLIFY = FALSE)) 9.977436 10.401576 10.658964 11.762009 15.09721 100
df * rep(v, each = nrow(df)) 14.309822 14.956705 16.092469 16.516609 45.13450 100
> testit(1000,10)
Unit: microseconds
expr min lq median uq max neval
data.frame(t(t(df) * v)) 754.844 805.062 844.431 1850.363 27955.79 100
data.frame(mapply(`*`, df, v, SIMPLIFY = FALSE)) 1457.895 1497.088 1567.604 2550.090 4732.03 100
df * rep(v, each = nrow(df)) 5383.288 5527.817 5875.143 6628.586 32392.81 100
> testit(10,1000)
Unit: milliseconds
expr min lq median uq max neval
data.frame(t(t(df) * v)) 17.07548 18.29418 19.91498 20.67944 57.62913 100
data.frame(mapply(`*`, df, v, SIMPLIFY = FALSE)) 99.90103 104.36028 108.28147 114.82012 150.05907 100
df * rep(v, each = nrow(df)) 112.21719 118.74359 122.51308 128.82863 164.57431 100