[R] How to avoid the three loops in R?

[John McKown]

On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 6:41 AM, Lingyi Ma <lingyi.ma at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the following data set:
>
>   Country  Product   Price  Year_Month
>      AE         1           20    201204
>      DE         1           20    201204
>      CN         1           28    201204
>      AE         2           28    201204
>      DE         2           28    201204
>      CN         2           22    201204
>      AE         3           28    201204
>      CN         3           28    201204
>      AE         1           20    201205
>      DE         1           20    201205
>      CN         1           28    201205
>      AE         2           28    201205
>      DE         2           28    201205
>
> I want to create the one more column which is "The average price of the
> product in other areas".
> in other word, for each month, for each product, I calculate the average of
> such product in the other area.
>
> I want sth like:
>
>   Country  Product   Price  Year_Month    Price_average_In_Other_area
>      AE         1           20    201204              14
>      AE         2           28    201204              25

The output above looks wrong. The Price_average_In_Other_area for AE,
product 1 should be 24?

My possible solution:

# Initialize data.frame & call it "x".
Country <- c("AE","DE","CN","AE","DE","CN","AE","CN","AE","DE","CN","AE","DE");
Product <- c(1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,1,1,1,2,2);
Price <- c(20,20,28,28,28,22,28,28,20,20,28,28,28);
Year_Month <- c(201204,201204,201204,201204,201204,201204,201204,201204,201205,201205,201205,201205,201205);
x <- data.frame(Country,Product,Price,Year_Month,stringsAsFactors=FALSE);
#
#
library("dplyr");
#
# Get the total Price of all Products and number of Products for each
Product & Year_Month"
y <- summarize(group_by(x, Product,
Year_Month),sumPrice=sum(Price),NoPrice=length(Price));
#
# Merge the above data back into the original data.frame, based on
# Product and Year_Month (similar to SQL inner join).
x <- merge(x=x,y=y);
#
# Now calculate the "other area" average by subtracting the cost in this area
# from the total cost in all areas and divide by the number of areas, minus one.
# Please note that if a Product and Year_Month is unique, i.e. no other areas
# for this Product & Year_Month, this will try to divide by zero.
# This gives "Inf" as an answer.
x$Prive_average_In_Other_area <- (x$sumPrice-x$Price)/(x$NoPrice-1);
# Possible alternate to handle above consideration
x$Avg_other <- ifelse(x$NoPrice>1,(x$sumPrice-x$Price)/(x$NoPrice-1),NA);



>
> Please avoid the three for loop, I have tried and it never end. I have
>  1070427 rows.  Is there better way to speed up my program?

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Genghis Khan

Maranatha! <><
John McKown