Grouped Sampling

In rqdatatable: 'rquery' for 'data.table'

This is an example of the current idiomatic way to sample per-group using rqdatatable or rquery.

The idea is to use a random order and per-group row numbering. This works well in-memory.

library("rqdatatable")

n <- 100000
set.seed(325235)
d <- data.frame(
  x = sample(letters, n, replace = TRUE),
  y = sample(letters, n, replace = TRUE),
  z = sample(letters, n, replace = TRUE),
  id = seq_len(n),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

grouping_vars <- qc(x, y, z)

sample_ops <- local_td(d) %.>%
  extend_nse(., one := 1) %.>%
  extend_nse(., ord := runif(sum(one))) %.>%
  pick_top_k(., 
             k = 5,
             partitionby = grouping_vars,
             orderby = "ord")

samp <- ex_data_table(sample_ops)
head(samp)

And the database version is very similar (on databases with window functions).

The main issue is landing the random order without having to translate the R runif(sum(one)) code into database operations.

library("rquery")

db <- DBI::dbConnect(RPostgreSQL::PostgreSQL(),
                     host = 'localhost',
                     port = 5432,
                     user = 'johnmount',
                     password = '')

rq_copy_to(db, "d", d,
           overwrite = TRUE,
           temporary = TRUE)

sample_ops <- local_td(d) %.>%
  extend_nse(., ord := random()) %.>%
  pick_top_k(., 
             k = 5,
             partitionby = grouping_vars,
             orderby = "ord")

samp <- execute(db, sample_ops, allow_executor = FALSE)

DBI::dbDisconnect(db)

The main issue is the different notation used in each pipeline to land the random column.

We can unify this by supplying translations from some common database notations (such as no-argument random()) to the data.table implementation.

sample_ops <- local_td(d) %.>%
  extend_nse(., ord := random()) %.>%
  pick_top_k(., 
             k = 5,
             partitionby = grouping_vars,
             orderby = "ord")

samp <- ex_data_table(sample_ops)
head(samp)

The translations available are listed in the package variable rqdatatable:::data_table_extend_fns.

str(rqdatatable:::data_table_extend_fns)

rqdatatable documentation built on Aug. 21, 2023, 9:10 a.m.