Interpolate variables on subsets of dataframe - r

Question

I have a large dataframe which has observations from surveys from multiple states for several years. Here's the data structure:
state | survey.year | time1 | obs1 | time2 | obs2
CA | 2000 | 1 | 23 | 1.2 | 43
CA | 2001 | 2 | 43 | 1.4 | 52
CA | 2002 | 5 | 53 | 3.2 | 61
...
CA | 1998 | 3 | 12 | 2.3 | 20
CA | 1999 | 4 | 14 | 2.8 | 25
CA | 2003 | 5 | 19 | 4.3 | 29
...
ND | 2000 | 2 | 223 | 3.2 | 239
ND | 2001 | 4 | 233 | 4.2 | 321
ND | 2003 | 7 | 256 | 7.9 | 387
For each state/survey.year combination, I would like to interpolate obs2 so that it's time-location is lined up with (time1,obs1).
ie I would like to break up the dataframe into state/survey.year chunks, perform my linear interpolation, and then stitch the individual state/survey.year dataframes back together into a master dataframe.
I have been trying to figure out how to use the plyr and Hmisc packages for this. But keeping getting myself in a tangle.
Here's the code that I wrote to do the interpolation:
require(Hmisc)
df <- new.obs2 <- NULL
for (i in 1:(0.5*(ncol(indirect)-1))){
df[,"new.obs2"] <- approxExtrap(df[,"time1"],
df[,"obs1"],
xout = df[,"obs2"],
method="linear",
rule=2)
}
But I am not sure how to unleash plyr on this problem. Your generous advice and suggestions would be much appreciated. Essentially - I am just trying to interpolate "obs2", within each state/survey.year combination, so it's time references line up with those of "obs1".
Of course if there's a slick way to do this without invoking plyr functions, then I'd be open to that...
Thank you!

Answer 1

This should be as simple as,
ddply(df,.(state,survey.year),transform,
new.obs2 = approxExtrap(time1,obs1,xout = obs2,
method = "linear",
rule = 2))
But I can't promise you anything, since I haven't the foggiest idea what the point of your for loop is. (It's overwriting df[,"new.obs2"] each time through the loop? You initialize the entire data frame df to NULL? What's indirect?)