Your question seems rather poorly specified to me, and you may have to clarify it further, but I'll make a stab at it.
IF one can assume that: 1. "a" must occur before "b", "b" before "c" etc. AND 2. "sec" is always increasing THEN z <- tapply(sec, ind, FUN = min) gives the first appearance sec value for each letter and outer(z,z,"-") gives the matrix of differences (in which the upper triangle is the negative of the lower) Is that what you wanted? -- Bert On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 6:00 AM, Grant Gillis <grant.j.gil...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear List, > > I have data on a approximately 100 individuals visiting a a central logging > station over a 1000 times. I would like to be able to calculate the > distribution of inter-visit time intervals for all possible pairs am stuck > on how to code for this. Single pairs are not a problem but extending it > has been difficult for me. So for the toy data below I'd like to calculate > for each 'a' how long until I see 'b' as well as for each 'b', how long > until I see 'a' and so on for all possible pairs (2 triangle of a matrix?) > > Thanks for any help, hints, and suggestions. > > Grant > > > toy data: > > ind <- c('a', 'b', 'a', 'c', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'a', 'c') > > > sec <- c(1, 3, 5, 6, 12, 22, 66, 85, 99) > > What I am looking for > > ab > 2 > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics Internal Contact Info: Phone: 467-7374 Website: http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.