Cumulative count of each value

Question

I want to create a cumulative counter of the number of times each value appears.

e.g. say I have the column:

id  
1  
2  
3  
2  
2  
1  
2  
3

This would become:

id   count  
1     1  
2     1  
3     1  
2     2  
2     3  
1     2  
2     4  
3     2  

etc...

Answer 1

The ave function computes a function by group.

> id <- c(1,2,3,2,2,1,2,3)
> data.frame(id,count=ave(id==id, id, FUN=cumsum))
  id count
1  1     1
2  2     1
3  3     1
4  2     2
5  2     3
6  1     2
7  2     4
8  3     2

I use id==id to create a vector of all TRUE values, which get converted to numeric when passed to cumsum. You could replace id==id with rep(1,length(id)).

Answer 2

Here is a way to get the counts:

id <- c(1,2,3,2,2,1,2,3)

sapply(1:length(id),function(i)sum(id[i]==id[1:i]))

Which gives you:

[1] 1 1 1 2 3 2 4 2

Answer 3

The dplyr way:

library(dplyr)

foo <- data.frame(id=c(1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3))
foo <- foo %>% group_by(id) %>% mutate(count=row_number())
foo

# A tibble: 8 x 2
# Groups:   id [3]
     id count
  <dbl> <int>
1     1     1
2     2     1
3     3     1
4     2     2
5     2     3
6     1     2
7     2     4
8     3     2

That ends up grouped by id. If you want it not grouped, add %>% ungroup().

Answer 4

For completeness, adding a data.table way:

library(data.table)

DT <- data.table(id = c(1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3))

DT[, count := seq(.N), by = id][]

Output:

   id count
1:  1     1
2:  2     1
3:  3     1
4:  2     2
5:  2     3
6:  1     2
7:  2     4
8:  3     2

Answer 5

The dataframe I had was too large and the accepted answer kept crashing. This worked for me:

library(plyr)
df$ones <- 1
df <- ddply(df, .(id), transform, cumulative_count = cumsum(ones))
df$ones <- NULL 

Answer 6

Function to get the cumulative count of any array, including a non-numeric array:

cumcount <- function(x){
  cumcount <- numeric(length(x))
  names(cumcount) <- x

  for(i in 1:length(x)){
    cumcount[i] <- sum(x[1:i]==x[i])
  }

  return(cumcount)
}