Aggregate a variable using two grouping variables within a function in R

Question

I am trying to write a function which will give me simple descriptive statistics of a population by age and country.

Here is an example of my data:

popcount = 200:250
sex = rep(c("M", "F"), 25)
country = rep(c("NZ", "Aus", "Fiji", "PNG", "Samoa"), 10)

To get the aggregation, I have specified the following function

Aggregate_fun <- function(pop, ag1, ag2) {
popbylist <- data.frame(aggregate(pop, by = list(ag1, ag2)), FUN=sum)
return(popbylist)
}

Then I run this function on my data

Gend_Country <- Aggregate_fun(pop = popcount, ag1 = sex, ag2 = country)

When I run this, I get the following error message:

Error in match.fun(FUN) : argument "FUN" is missing, with no default

6. match.fun(FUN) 5. aggregate.data.frame(as.data.frame(x), ...) 4. aggregate.default(pop, by = list(ag1, ag2)) 3. aggregate(pop, by = list(ag1, ag2)) 2. data.frame(aggregate(pop, by = list(ag1, ag2)), FUN = sum) 1. Aggregate_fun(pop = popcount, ag1 = sex, ag2 = country)

I know there's an error with the way I am specifying the list of variables to aggregate by. I've tried a number of different things to fix this, but none of them work. Does anyone know how to write this function correctly?

J Hart · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-11 00:55:43Z

2

Looks like a parenthesis is misplaced in that aggregate function placing the "FUN" outside of aggregate. Additionally popcount had 51 values while the other two only had 50. This code below is doing what I think you desire.

popcount = 201:250
sex = rep(c("M", "F"), 25)
country = rep(c("NZ", "Aus", "Fiji", "PNG", "Samoa"), 10)

Aggregate_fun <- function(pop, ag1, ag2) {
  popbylist <- data.frame(aggregate(pop, by = list(ag1, ag2), FUN=sum))
  return(popbylist)
}

Gend_Country <- Aggregate_fun(pop = popcount, ag1 = sex, ag2 = country)

answered Oct 11, 2017 at 0:55

J Hart

894 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Aggregate a variable using two grouping variables within a function in R

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related