How to use Dplyr's Summarize and which() to lookup min/max values

Question

I have the following data:

Name <- c("Sam", "Sarah", "Jim", "Fred", "James", "Sally", "Andrew", "John", "Mairin", "Kate", "Sasha", "Ray", "Ed")
Age <- c(22,12,31,35,58,82,17,34,12,24,44,67,43)
Group <- c("A", "B", "B", "B", "B", "C", "C", "D", "D", "D", "D", "D", "D") 
data <- data.frame(Name, Age, Group)

And I'd like to use dplyr to

(1) group the data by "Group" (2) show the min and max Age within each Group (3) show the Name of the person with the min and max ages

The following code does this:

data %>% group_by(Group) %>%
     summarize(minAge = min(Age), minAgeName = Name[which(Age == min(Age))], 
               maxAge = max(Age), maxAgeName = Name[which(Age == max(Age))])

Which works well:

  Group minAge minAgeName maxAge maxAgeName
1     A     22        Sam     22        Sam
2     B     12      Sarah     58      James
3     C     17     Andrew     82      Sally
4     D     12     Mairin     67        Ray

However, I have a problem if there are multiple min or max values:

Name <- c("Sam", "Sarah", "Jim", "Fred", "James", "Sally", "Andrew", "John", "Mairin", "Kate", "Sasha", "Ray", "Ed")
Age <- c(22,31,31,35,58,82,17,34,12,24,44,67,43)
Group <- c("A", "B", "B", "B", "B", "C", "C", "D", "D", "D", "D", "D", "D") 
data <- data.frame(Name, Age, Group)

> data %>% group_by(Group) %>%
+   summarize(minAge = min(Age), minAgeName = Name[which(Age == min(Age))], 
+             maxAge = max(Age), maxAgeName = Name[which(Age == max(Age))])
Error: expecting a single value

I'm looking for two solutions:

(1) where it doesn't matter which min or max name is shown, just that one is shown (i.e., the first value found) (2) where if there are "ties" all minimum values and maximum values are shown

Please let me know if this isn't clear and thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Here are some data.table approaches, the first one borrowed from @akrun:

setDT(data)

# show one, wide format
data[,c(min=.SD[which.min(Age)],max=.SD[which.max(Age)]),by=Group]
   # Group min.Name min.Age max.Name max.Age
# 1:     A      Sam      22      Sam      22
# 2:     B    Sarah      31    James      58
# 3:     C   Andrew      17    Sally      82
# 4:     D   Mairin      12      Ray      67

# show all, long format
data[,{
  mina=min(Age)
  maxa=max(Age)
  rbind(
    data.table(minmax="min",Age=mina,Name=Name[which(Age==mina)]),
    data.table(minmax="max",Age=maxa,Name=Name[which(Age==maxa)])
)},by=Group]
   # Group minmax Age   Name
# 1:     A    min  22    Sam
# 2:     A    max  22    Sam
# 3:     B    min  31  Sarah
# 4:     B    min  31    Jim
# 5:     B    max  58  James
# 6:     C    min  17 Andrew
# 7:     C    max  82  Sally
# 8:     D    min  12 Mairin
# 9:     D    max  67    Ray    

I think the long format is the best, since it allows you to filter with minmax, but the code is tortured and inefficient.

Here are some arguably less good ways:

# show all, wide format (with a list column)
data[,{
  mina=min(Age)
  maxa=max(Age)
  list(
    minAge=mina,
    maxAge=maxa,
    minNames=list(Name[Age==mina]),
    maxNames=list(Name[Age==maxa]))
},by=Group]
   # Group minAge maxAge  minNames maxNames
# 1:     A     22     22       Sam      Sam
# 2:     B     31     58 Sarah,Jim    James
# 3:     C     17     82    Andrew    Sally
# 4:     D     12     67    Mairin      Ray


# show all, wide format (with a string column)
# (just look at @shadow's answer)

Answer 2

I would actually recommend keeping your data in a "long" format. Here's how I would approach this:

library(dplyr)

Keeping all values when there are ties:

data %>%
  group_by(Group) %>%
  arrange(Age) %>%  ## optional
  filter(Age %in% range(Age))
# Source: local data frame [8 x 3]
# Groups: Group
# 
#     Name Age Group
# 1    Sam  22     A
# 2  Sarah  31     B
# 3    Jim  31     B
# 4  James  58     B
# 5 Andrew  17     C
# 6  Sally  82     C
# 7 Mairin  12     D
# 8    Ray  67     D

Keeping only one value when there are ties:

data %>%
  group_by(Group) %>%
  arrange(Age) %>%
  slice(if (length(Age) == 1) 1 else c(1, n())) ## maybe overkill?
# Source: local data frame [7 x 3]
# Groups: Group
# 
#     Name Age Group
# 1    Sam  22     A
# 2  Sarah  31     B
# 3  James  58     B
# 4 Andrew  17     C
# 5  Sally  82     C
# 6 Mairin  12     D
# 7    Ray  67     D

---

If you really want a "wide" dataset, the basic concept would be to gather and spread the data, using "tidyr":

library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)

data %>%
  group_by(Group) %>%
  arrange(Age) %>%
  slice(c(1, n())) %>%
  mutate(minmax = c("min", "max")) %>%
  gather(var, val, Name:Age) %>%
  unite(key, minmax, var) %>%
  spread(key, val)
# Source: local data frame [4 x 5]
# 
#   Group max_Age max_Name min_Age min_Name
# 1     A      22      Sam      22      Sam
# 2     B      58    James      31    Sarah
# 3     C      82    Sally      17   Andrew
# 4     D      67      Ray      12   Mairin

Though what wide form you would want with ties is unclear.

Answer 3

You can use which.min and which.max to get the first value.

data %>% group_by(Group) %>%
  summarize(minAge = min(Age), minAgeName = Name[which.min(Age)], 
            maxAge = max(Age), maxAgeName = Name[which.max(Age)])

To get all values, use e.g. paste with an appropriate collapse argument.

data %>% group_by(Group) %>%
  summarize(minAge = min(Age), minAgeName = paste(Name[which(Age == min(Age))], collapse = ", "), 
            maxAge = max(Age), maxAgeName = paste(Name[which(Age == max(Age))], collapse = ", "))