How to create a lag variable within each group?
I have a data.table:
set.seed(1)
data <- data.table(time = c(1:3, 1:4),
groups = c(rep(c("b", "a"), c(3, 4))),
value = rnorm(7))
data
# groups time value
# 1: b 1 -0.6264538
# 2: b 2 0.1836433
# 3: b 3 -0.8356286
# 4: a 1 1.5952808
# 5: a 2 0.3295078
# 6: a 3 -0.8204684
# 7: a 4 0.4874291
I want to compute a lagged version of the "value" column, within each level of "groups".
The result should look like
# groups time value lag.value
# 1 a 1 1.5952808 NA
# 2 a 2 0.3295078 1.5952808
# 3 a 3 -0.8204684 0.3295078
# 4 a 4 0.4874291 -0.8204684
# 5 b 1 -0.6264538 NA
# 6 b 2 0.1836433 -0.6264538
# 7 b 3 -0.8356286 0.1836433
I have tried to use lag directly:
data$lag.value <- lag(data$value)
...which clearly wouldn't work.
I have also tried:
unlist(tapply(data$value, data$groups, lag))
a1 a2 a3 a4 b1 b2 b3
NA -0.1162932 0.4420753 2.1505440 NA 0.5894583 -0.2890288
Which is almost what I want. However the vector generated is ordered differently from the ordering in the data.table which is problematic.
What is the most efficient way to do this in base R, plyr, dplyr, and data.table?
You could do this within data.table
library(data.table)
data[, lag.value:=c(NA, value[-.N]), by=groups]
data
# time groups value lag.value
#1: 1 a 0.02779005 NA
#2: 2 a 0.88029938 0.02779005
#3: 3 a -1.69514201 0.88029938
#4: 1 b -1.27560288 NA
#5: 2 b -0.65976434 -1.27560288
#6: 3 b -1.37804943 -0.65976434
#7: 4 b 0.12041778 -1.37804943
For multiple columns:
nm1 <- grep("^value", colnames(data), value=TRUE)
nm2 <- paste("lag", nm1, sep=".")
data[, (nm2):=lapply(.SD, function(x) c(NA, x[-.N])), by=groups, .SDcols=nm1]
data
# time groups value value1 value2 lag.value lag.value1
#1: 1 b -0.6264538 0.7383247 1.12493092 NA NA
#2: 2 b 0.1836433 0.5757814 -0.04493361 -0.6264538 0.7383247
#3: 3 b -0.8356286 -0.3053884 -0.01619026 0.1836433 0.5757814
#4: 1 a 1.5952808 1.5117812 0.94383621 NA NA
#5: 2 a 0.3295078 0.3898432 0.82122120 1.5952808 1.5117812
#6: 3 a -0.8204684 -0.6212406 0.59390132 0.3295078 0.3898432
#7: 4 a 0.4874291 -2.2146999 0.91897737 -0.8204684 -0.6212406
# lag.value2
#1: NA
#2: 1.12493092
#3: -0.04493361
#4: NA
#5: 0.94383621
#6: 0.82122120
#7: 0.59390132
Update
From data.table versions >= v1.9.5, we can use shift with type as lag or lead. By default, the type is lag.
data[, (nm2) := shift(.SD), by=groups, .SDcols=nm1]
# time groups value value1 value2 lag.value lag.value1
#1: 1 b -0.6264538 0.7383247 1.12493092 NA NA
#2: 2 b 0.1836433 0.5757814 -0.04493361 -0.6264538 0.7383247
#3: 3 b -0.8356286 -0.3053884 -0.01619026 0.1836433 0.5757814
#4: 1 a 1.5952808 1.5117812 0.94383621 NA NA
#5: 2 a 0.3295078 0.3898432 0.82122120 1.5952808 1.5117812
#6: 3 a -0.8204684 -0.6212406 0.59390132 0.3295078 0.3898432
#7: 4 a 0.4874291 -2.2146999 0.91897737 -0.8204684 -0.6212406
# lag.value2
#1: NA
#2: 1.12493092
#3: -0.04493361
#4: NA
#5: 0.94383621
#6: 0.82122120
#7: 0.59390132
If you need the reverse, use type=lead
nm3 <- paste("lead", nm1, sep=".")
Using the original dataset
data[, (nm3) := shift(.SD, type='lead'), by = groups, .SDcols=nm1]
# time groups value value1 value2 lead.value lead.value1
#1: 1 b -0.6264538 0.7383247 1.12493092 0.1836433 0.5757814
#2: 2 b 0.1836433 0.5757814 -0.04493361 -0.8356286 -0.3053884
#3: 3 b -0.8356286 -0.3053884 -0.01619026 NA NA
#4: 1 a 1.5952808 1.5117812 0.94383621 0.3295078 0.3898432
#5: 2 a 0.3295078 0.3898432 0.82122120 -0.8204684 -0.6212406
#6: 3 a -0.8204684 -0.6212406 0.59390132 0.4874291 -2.2146999
#7: 4 a 0.4874291 -2.2146999 0.91897737 NA NA
# lead.value2
#1: -0.04493361
#2: -0.01619026
#3: NA
#4: 0.82122120
#5: 0.59390132
#6: 0.91897737
#7: NA
data
set.seed(1)
data <- data.table(time =c(1:3,1:4),groups = c(rep(c("b","a"),c(3,4))),
value = rnorm(7), value1=rnorm(7), value2=rnorm(7))
Using package dplyr:
library(dplyr)
data <-
data %>%
group_by(groups) %>%
mutate(lag.value = dplyr::lag(value, n = 1, default = NA))
gives
> data
Source: local data table [7 x 4]
Groups: groups
time groups value lag.value
1 1 a 0.07614866 NA
2 2 a -0.02784712 0.07614866
3 3 a 1.88612245 -0.02784712
4 1 b 0.26526825 NA
5 2 b 1.23820506 0.26526825
6 3 b 0.09276648 1.23820506
7 4 b -0.09253594 0.09276648
As noted by @BrianD, this implicitly assumes that value is sorted by group already. If not, either sort it by group, or use the order_by argument in lag. Also note that due to an existing issue with some versions of dplyr, for safety, arguments and the namespace should be explicitly given.
In base R, this will do the job:
data$lag.value <- c(NA, data$value[-nrow(data)])
data$lag.value[which(!duplicated(data$groups))] <- NA
The first line adds a string of lagged (+1) observations. The second string corrects the first entry of each group, as the lagged observation is from previous group.
Note that data is of format data.frame to not use data.table.
I wanted to complement the previous answers by mentioning two ways in which I approach this problem in the important case when you are not guaranteed that each group has data for every time period. That is, you still have a regularly spaced time series, but there might be missings here and there. I will focus on two ways to improve the dplyr solution.
We start with the same data that you used...
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
set.seed(1)
data_df = data.frame(time = c(1:3, 1:4),
groups = c(rep(c("b", "a"), c(3, 4))),
value = rnorm(7))
data_df
#> time groups value
#> 1 1 b -0.6264538
#> 2 2 b 0.1836433
#> 3 3 b -0.8356286
#> 4 1 a 1.5952808
#> 5 2 a 0.3295078
#> 6 3 a -0.8204684
#> 7 4 a 0.4874291
... but now we delete a couple of rows
data_df = data_df[-c(2, 6), ]
data_df
#> time groups value
#> 1 1 b -0.6264538
#> 3 3 b -0.8356286
#> 4 1 a 1.5952808
#> 5 2 a 0.3295078
#> 7 4 a 0.4874291
Simple dplyr solution no longer works
data_df %>%
arrange(groups, time) %>%
group_by(groups) %>%
mutate(lag.value = lag(value)) %>%
ungroup()
#> # A tibble: 5 x 4
#> time groups value lag.value
#> <int> <fct> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 1 a 1.60 NA
#> 2 2 a 0.330 1.60
#> 3 4 a 0.487 0.330
#> 4 1 b -0.626 NA
#> 5 3 b -0.836 -0.626
You see that, although we don't have the value for the case (group = 'a', time = '3'), the above still shows a value for the lag in the case of (group = 'a', time = '4'), which is actually the value at time = 2.
Correct dplyr solution
The idea is that we add the missing (group, time) combinations. This is VERY memory-inefficient when you have lots of possible (groups, time) combinations, but the values are sparsely captured.
dplyr_correct_df = expand.grid(
groups = sort(unique(data_df$groups)),
time = seq(from = min(data_df$time), to = max(data_df$time))
) %>%
left_join(data_df, by = c("groups", "time")) %>%
arrange(groups, time) %>%
group_by(groups) %>%
mutate(lag.value = lag(value)) %>%
ungroup()
dplyr_correct_df
#> # A tibble: 8 x 4
#> groups time value lag.value
#> <fct> <int> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 a 1 1.60 NA
#> 2 a 2 0.330 1.60
#> 3 a 3 NA 0.330
#> 4 a 4 0.487 NA
#> 5 b 1 -0.626 NA
#> 6 b 2 NA -0.626
#> 7 b 3 -0.836 NA
#> 8 b 4 NA -0.836
Notice that we now have a NA at (group = 'a', time = '4'), which should be the expected behaviour. Same with (group = 'b', time = '3').
Tedious but also correct solution using the class zoo::zooreg
This solution should work better in terms of memory when the amount of cases is very large, because instead of filling the missing cases with NA's, it uses indices.
library(zoo)
zooreg_correct_df = data_df %>%
as_tibble() %>%
# nest the data for each group
# should work for multiple groups variables
nest(-groups, .key = "zoo_ob") %>%
mutate(zoo_ob = lapply(zoo_ob, function(d) {
# create zooreg objects from the individual data.frames created by nest
z = zoo::zooreg(
data = select(d,-time),
order.by = d$time,
frequency = 1
) %>%
# calculate lags
# we also ask for the 0'th order lag so that we keep the original value
zoo:::lag.zooreg(k = (-1):0) # note the sign convention is different
# recover df's from zooreg objects
cbind(
time = as.integer(zoo::index(z)),
zoo:::as.data.frame.zoo(z)
)
})) %>%
unnest() %>%
# format values
select(groups, time, value = value.lag0, lag.value = `value.lag-1`) %>%
arrange(groups, time) %>%
# eliminate additional periods created by lag
filter(time <= max(data_df$time))
zooreg_correct_df
#> # A tibble: 8 x 4
#> groups time value lag.value
#> <fct> <int> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 a 1 1.60 NA
#> 2 a 2 0.330 1.60
#> 3 a 3 NA 0.330
#> 4 a 4 0.487 NA
#> 5 b 1 -0.626 NA
#> 6 b 2 NA -0.626
#> 7 b 3 -0.836 NA
#> 8 b 4 NA -0.836
Finally, lets check that both correct solutions are actually equal:
all.equal(dplyr_correct_df, zooreg_correct_df)
#> [1] TRUE