Dear list members,

I am trying to create a subset of a data frame based on conditions in two columns, and after spending much time trying (and search R-help) have not had any luck. Essentially, I have a data frame that is something like this:

date<-as.POSIXct(as.character(c("2012-01-25","2012-01-25","2012-01-26","2012-01-27","2012-01-27","2012-01-27")))
time<-as.POSIXct(as.character(c("13:20", "13:40", "14:00", "10:00", "10:20", "10:20")), format="%H:%M")
count<-c(12,14,11,12,12,8)
data<-data.frame(date,time,count)

which looks like:

    date         time      count
1 2012-01-25    13:20:00     12
2 2012-01-25    13:40:00     14
3 2012-01-26    14:00:00     11
4 2012-01-27    10:00:00     12
5 2012-01-27    10:20:00     12
6 2012-01-27    10:20:00      8

I would like to create a subset by doing the following: for each unique date, only include one case which will be the case with the max value for the column labelled "count". So the resulting subset would be:

    date         time      count
2 2012-01-25    13:40:00     14
3 2012-01-26    14:00:00     11
4 2012-01-27    10:00:00     12

Some dates have two cases at which the "count" was the same, but I only want to include one case (I don't really mind which case it chooses, but if need be it could be based on the earliest "time" for which the same counts occurred). I have tried various loops with no success! I'm sure that there is an easy answer that I have not found! Any help is much appreciated!!

All the best,

Chandra


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

