I am dealing with a dataset that is in wide format, as in
> data=read.csv("http://www.kuleuven.be/bio/ento/temp/data.csv")
> data
factor1 factor2 count_1 count_2 count_3
1 a a 1 2 0
2 a b 3 0 0
3 b a 1 2 3
4 b b 2 2 0
5 c a 3 4 0
6 c b 1 1 0
where factor1 and factor2 are different factors which I would like to take along (in fact I have more than 2, but that shouldn't matter), and count_1 to count_3 are counts of aggressive interactions on an ordinal scale (3>2>1). I would now like to convert this dataset to long format, to get something like
factor1 factor2 aggression
1 a a 1
2 a a 2
3 a a 2
4 a b 1
5 a b 1
6 a b 1
7 b a 1
8 b a 2
9 b a 2
10 b a 3
11 b a 3
12 b a 3
13 b b 1
14 b b 1
15 b b 2
16 b b 2
17 c a 1
18 c a 1
19 c a 1
20 c a 2
21 c a 2
22 c a 2
23 c a 2
24 c b 1
25 c b 2
Would anyone happen to know how to do this without using for...to loops, e.g. using package reshape2? (I realize it should work using melt, but I just haven't been able to figure out the right syntax yet)
Edit: For those of you that would also happen to need this kind of functionality, here is Ananda's answer below wrapped into a little function:
widetolong.ordinal<-function(data,factors,responses,responsename) {
library(reshape2)
data$ID=1:nrow(data) # add an ID to preserve row order
dL=melt(data, id.vars=c("ID", factors)) # `melt` the data
dL=dL[order(dL$ID), ] # sort the molten data
dL[,responsename]=match(dL$variable,responses) # convert reponses to ordinal scores
dL[,responsename]=factor(dL[,responsename],ordered=T)
dL=dL[dL$value != 0, ] # drop rows where `value == 0`
out=dL[rep(rownames(dL), dL$value), c(factors, responsename)] # use `rep` to "expand" `data.frame` & drop unwanted columns
rownames(out) <- NULL
return(out)
}
# example
data <- read.csv("http://www.kuleuven.be/bio/ento/temp/data.csv")
widetolong.ordinal(data,c("factor1","factor2"),c("count_1","count_2","count_3"),"aggression")
melt from "reshape2" will only get you part of the way through this problem. To go the rest of the way, you just need to use rep from base R:
data <- read.csv("http://www.kuleuven.be/bio/ento/temp/data.csv")
library(reshape2)
## Add an ID if the row order is importantt o you
data$ID <- 1:nrow(data)
## `melt` the data
dL <- melt(data, id.vars=c("ID", "factor1", "factor2"))
## Sort the molten data, if necessary
dL <- dL[order(dL$ID), ]
## Extract the numeric portion of the "variable" variable
dL$aggression <- gsub("count_", "", dL$variable)
## Drop rows where `value == 0`
dL <- dL[dL$value != 0, ]
## Use `rep` to "expand" your `data.frame`.
## Drop any unwanted columns at this point.
out <- dL[rep(rownames(dL), dL$value), c("factor1", "factor2", "aggression")]
This is what the output finally looks like. If you want to remove the funny row names, just use rownames(out) <- NULL.
out
# factor1 factor2 aggression
# 1 a a 1
# 7 a a 2
# 7.1 a a 2
# 2 a b 1
# 2.1 a b 1
# 2.2 a b 1
# 3 b a 1
# 9 b a 2
# 9.1 b a 2
# 15 b a 3
# 15.1 b a 3
# 15.2 b a 3
# 4 b b 1
# 4.1 b b 1
# 10 b b 2
# 10.1 b b 2
# 5 c a 1
# 5.1 c a 1
# 5.2 c a 1
# 11 c a 2
# 11.1 c a 2
# 11.2 c a 2
# 11.3 c a 2
# 6 c b 1
# 12 c b 2