How to find the sum by two factor columns in R?

To find the sum by two factor columns, we can use aggregate function. This is mostly required when we have frequency/count data for two factors. For example, if we have a data frame called df that contains two factor columns say f1 and f2 and one numerical column say Count then the sum of Count by f1 and f2 can be calculated by using the command aggregate(Count~f1+f2,data=df,sum).

Example

Consider the below data frame −

 Live Demo

x1<-sample(LETTERS[1:4],20,replace=TRUE)
x2<-sample(letters[1:2],20,replace=TRUE)
freq<-rpois(20,5)
df1<-data.frame(x1,x2,freq)
df1

Output

   x1 x2 freq
1  D  b   4
2  C  b   6
3  C  b   7
4  A  b   4
5  C  b   4
6  C  a   6
7  C  b   2
8  C  a   7
9  D  b   4
10 D  b   7
11 B  a   3
12 B  a   6
13 A  a   5
14 B  b   5
15 C  a   2
16 B  a   5
17 A  b   6
18 B  a   8
19 C  a   2
20 D  a   5

Finding sum of freq based on the combination of x1 and x2 −

Example

aggregate(freq~x1+x2,data=df1,sum)

Output

  x1  x2 freq
1  A  a   5
2  B  a  22
3  C  a  17
4  D  a   5
5  A  b  10
6  B  b   5
7  C  b  19
8  D  b  15

Example

 Live Demo

y1<-sample(c("hot","cold"),20,replace=TRUE)
y2<-sample(c("Asia","America","Africa","Europe"),20,replace=TRUE)
count<-sample(1:10,20,replace=TRUE)
df2<-data.frame(y1,y2,count)
df2

Output

   y1       y2    count
1  hot    Africa    8
2  cold   America   8
3  hot    America   4
4  hot    Africa    5
5  hot   America    3
6  hot   Europe     9
7  cold  Asia      10
8  hot   America    4
9  hot   America    6
10 cold   Africa    5
11 cold  America    5
12 cold  America   10
13 cold  Africa     3
14 cold  America    5
15 hot   Asia       9
16 cold  Asia       4
17 cold  America    6
18 cold  Europe     4
19 cold  Africa     9
20 hot   Africa     8

Finding sum of count based on the combination of y1 and y2 −

Example

aggregate(count~y1+y2,data=df2,sum)

Output

    y1    y2     count
1  cold  Africa   17
2  hot   Africa   21
3  cold  America  34
4  hot   America  17
5  cold  Asia     14
6  hot   Asia      9
7  cold  Europe    4
8  hot   Europe    9