Sorry, it looks like I was hasty. Absent another dumb mistake, the following should do it.
The request was for differences, i.e., the amount of growth from one period to the next, separately for each tree. for (ir in unique(df$TreeID)) { in.ir <- df$TreeID == ir df$HeightGrowth[in.ir] <- c(NA, diff(df$Height[in.ir])) } And this gives the same result as Rui Barradas' previous response. -Don -- Don MacQueen Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 7000 East Ave., L-627 Livermore, CA 94550 925-423-1062 On 6/10/13 2:51 PM, "MacQueen, Don" <macque...@llnl.gov> wrote: >How about > >for (ir in unique(df$TreeID)) { > in.ir <- df$TreeID == ir > df$HeightGrowth[in.ir] <- cumsum(df$Height[in.ir]) >} > >Seemed fast enough to me. > >In R, it is generally good to look for ways to operate on entire vectors >or arrays, rather than element by element within them. The cumsum() >function does that in this example. > >-Don > > >-- >Don MacQueen > >Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory >7000 East Ave., L-627 >Livermore, CA 94550 >925-423-1062 > > > > > >On 6/10/13 10:28 AM, "Trevor Walker" <trevordaviswal...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>I have a For loop that is quite slow and am wondering if there is a >>faster >>option: >> >>df <- data.frame(TreeID=rep(1:500,each=20), Age=rep(seq(1,20,1),500)) >>df$Height <- exp(-0.1 + 0.2*df$Age) >>df$HeightGrowth <- NA #intialize with NA >>for (i in 2:nrow(df)) >> {if(df$TreeID[i]==df$TreeID[i-1]) >> {df$HeightGrowth[i] <- df$Height[i]-df$Height[i-1] >> } >> } >> >>Trevor Walker >>Email: trevordaviswal...@gmail.com >> >> [[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. > >______________________________________________ >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. ______________________________________________ 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.