Linear Regression and group by in R

I want to do a linear regression in R using the lm() function. My data is an annual time series with one field for year (22 years) and another for state (50 states). I want to fit a regression for each state so that at the end I have a vector of lm responses. I can imagine doing for loop for each state then doing the regression inside the loop and adding the results of each regression to a vector. That does not seem very R-like, however. In SAS I would do a 'by' statement and in SQL I would do a 'group by'. What's the R way of doing this?


Here's an approach using the plyr package:

d <- data.frame(
  state = rep(c('NY', 'CA'), 10),
  year = rep(1:10, 2),
  response= rnorm(20)
)

library(plyr)
# Break up d by state, then fit the specified model to each piece and
# return a list
models <- dlply(d, "state", function(df) 
  lm(response ~ year, data = df))

# Apply coef to each model and return a data frame
ldply(models, coef)

# Print the summary of each model
l_ply(models, summary, .print = TRUE)

Since 2009, dplyr has been released which actually provides a very nice way to do this kind of grouping, closely resembling what SAS does.

library(dplyr)

d <- data.frame(state=rep(c('NY', 'CA'), c(10, 10)),
                year=rep(1:10, 2),
                response=c(rnorm(10), rnorm(10)))
fitted_models = d %>% group_by(state) %>% do(model = lm(response ~ year, data = .))
# Source: local data frame [2 x 2]
# Groups: <by row>
#
#    state   model
#   (fctr)   (chr)
# 1     CA <S3:lm>
# 2     NY <S3:lm>
fitted_models$model
# [[1]]
# 
# Call:
# lm(formula = response ~ year, data = .)
# 
# Coefficients:
# (Intercept)         year  
#    -0.06354      0.02677  
#
#
# [[2]]
# 
# Call:
# lm(formula = response ~ year, data = .)
# 
# Coefficients:
# (Intercept)         year  
#    -0.35136      0.09385  

To retrieve the coefficients and Rsquared/p.value, one can use the broom package. This package provides:

three S3 generics: tidy, which summarizes a model's statistical findings such as coefficients of a regression; augment, which adds columns to the original data such as predictions, residuals and cluster assignments; and glance, which provides a one-row summary of model-level statistics.

library(broom)
fitted_models %>% tidy(model)
# Source: local data frame [4 x 6]
# Groups: state [2]
# 
#    state        term    estimate  std.error  statistic   p.value
#   (fctr)       (chr)       (dbl)      (dbl)      (dbl)     (dbl)
# 1     CA (Intercept) -0.06354035 0.83863054 -0.0757668 0.9414651
# 2     CA        year  0.02677048 0.13515755  0.1980687 0.8479318
# 3     NY (Intercept) -0.35135766 0.60100314 -0.5846187 0.5749166
# 4     NY        year  0.09385309 0.09686043  0.9689519 0.3609470
fitted_models %>% glance(model)
# Source: local data frame [2 x 12]
# Groups: state [2]
# 
#    state   r.squared adj.r.squared     sigma statistic   p.value    df
#   (fctr)       (dbl)         (dbl)     (dbl)     (dbl)     (dbl) (int)
# 1     CA 0.004879969  -0.119510035 1.2276294 0.0392312 0.8479318     2
# 2     NY 0.105032068  -0.006838924 0.8797785 0.9388678 0.3609470     2
# Variables not shown: logLik (dbl), AIC (dbl), BIC (dbl), deviance (dbl),
#   df.residual (int)
fitted_models %>% augment(model)
# Source: local data frame [20 x 10]
# Groups: state [2]
# 
#     state   response  year      .fitted   .se.fit     .resid      .hat
#    (fctr)      (dbl) (int)        (dbl)     (dbl)      (dbl)     (dbl)
# 1      CA  0.4547765     1 -0.036769875 0.7215439  0.4915464 0.3454545
# 2      CA  0.1217003     2 -0.009999399 0.6119518  0.1316997 0.2484848
# 3      CA -0.6153836     3  0.016771076 0.5146646 -0.6321546 0.1757576
# 4      CA -0.9978060     4  0.043541551 0.4379605 -1.0413476 0.1272727
# 5      CA  2.1385614     5  0.070312027 0.3940486  2.0682494 0.1030303
# 6      CA -0.3924598     6  0.097082502 0.3940486 -0.4895423 0.1030303
# 7      CA -0.5918738     7  0.123852977 0.4379605 -0.7157268 0.1272727
# 8      CA  0.4671346     8  0.150623453 0.5146646  0.3165112 0.1757576
# 9      CA -1.4958726     9  0.177393928 0.6119518 -1.6732666 0.2484848
# 10     CA  1.7481956    10  0.204164404 0.7215439  1.5440312 0.3454545
# 11     NY -0.6285230     1 -0.257504572 0.5170932 -0.3710185 0.3454545
# 12     NY  1.0566099     2 -0.163651479 0.4385542  1.2202614 0.2484848
# 13     NY -0.5274693     3 -0.069798386 0.3688335 -0.4576709 0.1757576
# 14     NY  0.6097983     4  0.024054706 0.3138637  0.5857436 0.1272727
# 15     NY -1.5511940     5  0.117907799 0.2823942 -1.6691018 0.1030303
# 16     NY  0.7440243     6  0.211760892 0.2823942  0.5322634 0.1030303
# 17     NY  0.1054719     7  0.305613984 0.3138637 -0.2001421 0.1272727
# 18     NY  0.7513057     8  0.399467077 0.3688335  0.3518387 0.1757576
# 19     NY -0.1271655     9  0.493320170 0.4385542 -0.6204857 0.2484848
# 20     NY  1.2154852    10  0.587173262 0.5170932  0.6283119 0.3454545
# Variables not shown: .sigma (dbl), .cooksd (dbl), .std.resid (dbl)

Here's one way using the lme4 package.

 library(lme4)
 d <- data.frame(state=rep(c('NY', 'CA'), c(10, 10)),
                 year=rep(1:10, 2),
                 response=c(rnorm(10), rnorm(10)))

 xyplot(response ~ year, groups=state, data=d, type='l')

 fits <- lmList(response ~ year | state, data=d)
 fits
#------------
Call: lmList(formula = response ~ year | state, data = d)
Coefficients:
   (Intercept)        year
CA -1.34420990  0.17139963
NY  0.00196176 -0.01852429

Degrees of freedom: 20 total; 16 residual
Residual standard error: 0.8201316

In my opinion is a mixed linear model a better approach for this kind of data. The code below given in the fixed effect the overall trend. The random effects indicate how the trend for each individual state differ from the global trend. The correlation structure takes the temporal autocorrelation into account. Have a look at Pinheiro & Bates (Mixed Effects Models in S and S-Plus).

library(nlme)
lme(response ~ year, random = ~year|state, correlation = corAR1(~year))

A nice solution using data.table was posted here in CrossValidated by @Zach. I'd just add that it is possible to obtain iteratively also the regression coefficient r^2:

## make fake data
    library(data.table)
    set.seed(1)
    dat <- data.table(x=runif(100), y=runif(100), grp=rep(1:2,50))

##calculate the regression coefficient r^2
    dat[,summary(lm(y~x))$r.squared,by=grp]
       grp         V1
    1:   1 0.01465726
    2:   2 0.02256595

as well as all the other output from summary(lm):

dat[,list(r2=summary(lm(y~x))$r.squared , f=summary(lm(y~x))$fstatistic[1] ),by=grp]
   grp         r2        f
1:   1 0.01465726 0.714014
2:   2 0.02256595 1.108173