[R] Count number of consecutive zeros by group

[William Dunlap]

> None of this checks that runs of zero exist in a group; if they don't, you'll get warnings
> and -Inf in the output as max takes maxima of nothing. You can add extra checks inside
> the function if that bothers you.

Just adding a second argument, 0, to the call to max() will take care of that.

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
> Of S Ellison
> Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:27 AM
> To: Carlos Nasher; r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Count number of consecutive zeros by group
> 
> > If I apply your function to my test data:
> >
> ....
> > the result is
> > 1 2 3
> > 2 2 2
> >
> ...
> > I think f2 does not return the max of consecutive zeros, but the max of any
> > consecutve number... Any idea how to fix this?
> 
> The toy example of tapply using f2 does indeed return the maximum run lengths
> irrespective of the value repeated.
> If you want to select runs of a particular value, you can select according to use $values
> element of the rle object, again inside the function.
> Modifying to accommodate that (and again avoiding a data frame name the same as a
> base R  function name - you managed it again!):
> 
> dfr <- data.frame(ID = c(1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,3), x = c(1,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,1))
> 
> f3 <-   function(x) {
>   runs <- rle(x == 0L) #Often wise to be careful with == and numbers ... see FAQ 7.31
>   with(runs, max(lengths[values]))
> 	#This works because in this case the values in
> 	#$values are TRUE for x==0 and FALSE otherwise; see ?'[' for why those work
> }
> with(dfr, tapply(x, ID, f3))
> 
> or, more or less equivalently but a shade more generally
> 
> f4 <-   function(x, select=0L) {
>   runs <- rle(x )
>   with(runs, max(lengths[values == select]))
> }
> with(dfr, tapply(x, ID, f4))
> 
> None of this checks that runs of zero exist in a group; if they don't, you'll get warnings
> and -Inf in the output as max takes maxima of nothing. You can add extra checks inside
> the function if that bothers you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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