Nest by one or more variables

nest_by() is closely related to group_by(). However, instead of storing the group structure in the metadata, it is made explicit in the data, giving each group key a single row along with a list-column of data frames that contain all the other data.

nest_by() returns a rowwise data frame, which makes operations on the grouped data particularly elegant. See vignette("rowwise") for more details.

nest_by(.data, ..., .key = "data", .keep = FALSE)

Arguments

.data	A data frame, data frame extension (e.g. a tibble), or a lazy data frame (e.g. from dbplyr or dtplyr). See Methods, below, for more details.
...	In group_by(), variables or computations to group by. In ungroup(), variables to remove from the grouping.
.key	Name of the list column
.keep	Should the grouping columns be kept in the list column.

Value

A rowwise data frame. The output has the following properties:

• The rows come from the underlying group_keys().

• The columns are the grouping keys plus one list-column of data frames.

• Data frame attributes are not preserved, because nest_by() fundamentally creates a new data frame.

A tbl with one row per unique combination of the grouping variables. The first columns are the grouping variables, followed by a list column of tibbles with matching rows of the remaining columns.

Details

Note that df %>% nest_by(x, y) is roughly equivalent to

df %>%
  group_by(x, y) %>%
  summarise(data = list(cur_data())) %>%
  rowwise()

If you want to unnest a nested data frame, you can either use tidyr::unnest() or take advantage of summarise()s multi-row behaviour:

nested %>%
  summarise(data)

Methods

This function is a generic, which means that packages can provide implementations (methods) for other classes. See the documentation of individual methods for extra arguments and differences in behaviour.

The following methods are currently available in loaded packages: dplyr (data.frame, grouped_df) .

Examples

# After nesting, you get one row per group
iris %>% nest_by(Species)
#> # A tibble: 3 x 2
#> # Rowwise:  Species
#>   Species                  data
#>   <fct>      <list<tibble[,4]>>
#> 1 setosa               [50 × 4]
#> 2 versicolor           [50 × 4]
#> 3 virginica            [50 × 4]
starwars %>% nest_by(species)
#> # A tibble: 38 x 2
#> # Rowwise:  species
#>    species                  data
#>    <chr>     <list<tibble[,13]>>
#>  1 Aleena               [1 × 13]
#>  2 Besalisk             [1 × 13]
#>  3 Cerean               [1 × 13]
#>  4 Chagrian             [1 × 13]
#>  5 Clawdite             [1 × 13]
#>  6 Droid                [6 × 13]
#>  7 Dug                  [1 × 13]
#>  8 Ewok                 [1 × 13]
#>  9 Geonosian            [1 × 13]
#> 10 Gungan               [3 × 13]
#> # … with 28 more rows

# The output is grouped by row, which makes modelling particularly easy
models <- mtcars %>%
  nest_by(cyl) %>%
  mutate(model = list(lm(mpg ~ wt, data = data)))
models
#> # A tibble: 3 x 3
#> # Rowwise:  cyl
#>     cyl                data model 
#>   <dbl> <list<tibble[,10]>> <list>
#> 1     4           [11 × 10] <lm>  
#> 2     6            [7 × 10] <lm>  
#> 3     8           [14 × 10] <lm>  

models %>% summarise(rsq = summary(model)$r.squared)
#> `summarise()` has grouped output by 'cyl'. You can override using the `.groups` argument.
#> # A tibble: 3 x 2
#> # Groups:   cyl [3]
#>     cyl   rsq
#>   <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1     4 0.509
#> 2     6 0.465
#> 3     8 0.423
# This is particularly elegant with the broom functions
if (requireNamespace("broom", quietly = TRUE)) {
  models %>% summarise(broom::glance(model))
  models %>% summarise(broom::tidy(model))
}
#> `summarise()` has grouped output by 'cyl'. You can override using the `.groups` argument.
#> `summarise()` has grouped output by 'cyl'. You can override using the `.groups` argument.
#> # A tibble: 6 x 6
#> # Groups:   cyl [3]
#>     cyl term        estimate std.error statistic    p.value
#>   <dbl> <chr>          <dbl>     <dbl>     <dbl>      <dbl>
#> 1     4 (Intercept)    39.6      4.35       9.10 0.00000777
#> 2     4 wt             -5.65     1.85      -3.05 0.0137    
#> 3     6 (Intercept)    28.4      4.18       6.79 0.00105   
#> 4     6 wt             -2.78     1.33      -2.08 0.0918    
#> 5     8 (Intercept)    23.9      3.01       7.94 0.00000405
#> 6     8 wt             -2.19     0.739     -2.97 0.0118    

# Note that you can also summarise to unnest the data
models %>% summarise(data)
#> `summarise()` has grouped output by 'cyl'. You can override using the `.groups` argument.
#> # A tibble: 32 x 11
#> # Groups:   cyl [3]
#>      cyl   mpg  disp    hp  drat    wt  qsec    vs    am  gear  carb
#>    <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#>  1     4  22.8 108      93  3.85  2.32  18.6     1     1     4     1
#>  2     4  24.4 147.     62  3.69  3.19  20       1     0     4     2
#>  3     4  22.8 141.     95  3.92  3.15  22.9     1     0     4     2
#>  4     4  32.4  78.7    66  4.08  2.2   19.5     1     1     4     1
#>  5     4  30.4  75.7    52  4.93  1.62  18.5     1     1     4     2
#>  6     4  33.9  71.1    65  4.22  1.84  19.9     1     1     4     1
#>  7     4  21.5 120.     97  3.7   2.46  20.0     1     0     3     1
#>  8     4  27.3  79      66  4.08  1.94  18.9     1     1     4     1
#>  9     4  26   120.     91  4.43  2.14  16.7     0     1     5     2
#> 10     4  30.4  95.1   113  3.77  1.51  16.9     1     1     5     2
#> # … with 22 more rows