counts: Obtain the counts for unique values of a vector.

In bcgov/elucidate: Convenience Functions to Help Researchers Elucidate Patterns in Their Data

Obtain the counts for unique values of a vector.

Description

counts returns the most or least common unique value(s) of a vector depending on whether ascending or descending sorting is used. Also useful for identifying data entry errors or rare cases. For complex use cases see describe.

Usage

counts(y, n = "all", order = c("d", "a", "i"), sep = "_", na.rm = TRUE)

Arguments

y	A vector/variable (required).
n	The number of unique values you want frequency counts for. Default is "all".
order	"d" for descending/decreasing order. "a" or "i" for ascending/increasing order.
sep	A character string to use to separate unique values from their counts ("_" by default).
na.rm	Should missing values be omitted (TRUE/FALSE)?

Value

A character vector of the unique value frequency counts from the input vector sorted in the chosen order. Return values are structured as "value_count", where the "_" portion takes on the value of the sep argument. Returning a character vector makes subsequent manipulation with stringr and other tidyverse tools fairly easily.

Author(s)

Craig P. Hutton, [e-mail]

See Also

table, sort

Examples

#using a numeric vector
y <- c(1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 2, 3, 4, 2, 9, 5, 6, 7, 23, 5, 6, 7, 8, 3, 4, 5, 6)

counts(y) #all unique values of y in order of descending frequency \code{y}
counts(y, n = 1) #the most common value of \code{y}
counts(y, n = 5) #the top 5 most common unique values of \code{y}

bcgov/elucidate documentation built on Sept. 3, 2022, 7:16 p.m.