R Comparing each value of all pairs of columns

Question

I have a data frame that is 18x18 and I would like to compare all possible pairs of columsn with each other, so that for each pair of two columns, the values in the 18 rows are compared to each other. Since my data is too big to put it here, I wrote a small example of what I have come up with so far: ``` > a <- c(1:18) > b <- c(18:1) > c <- c(1:9,18:10) data <- as.data.frame(matrix(c(a,b,c), ncol = 3, nrow = 18)) > data V1 V2 V3 1 1 18 1 2 2 17 2 3 3 16 3 4 4 15 4 5 5 14 5 6 6 13 6 7 7 12 7 8 8 11 8 9 9 10 9 10 10 9 18 11 11 8 17 12 12 7 16 13 13 6 15 14 14 5 14 15 15 4 13 16 16 3 12 17 17 2 11 18 18 1 10 ``` Say, I would like to compare col V1 with V3 and equal values in both columns (V1 and V3) are assigned with a 0, when the value of the first col (V1) is greater a 1 is assigned and when the value of the second col (V3) is greater, a 2 is assigned. I can do this manually for each pair with the following code, converting the results to a new data frame freqcomp: ``` > freqcomp <- as…

Accepted Answer

You need to use `combn()` and `apply()`:

```
apply(combn(1:length(data), 2), 2, function(x) {
    as.data.frame(table(
        factor(sign(data[,x[1]] - data[,x[2]]), levels=c(0,1,-1), labels=c(0,1,2))
    ))
})
```

(Split in multiple lines for readability).

It gives me:

```
[[1]]
  Var1 Freq
1    0    0
2    1    9
3    2    9

[[2]]
  Var1 Freq
1    0   10
2    1    4
3    2    4

[[3]]
  Var1 Freq
1    0    0
2    1    9
3    2    9
```

EDIT: Naming the column for each data.frame is easy:

```
apply(combn(1:length(data), 2), 2, function(x) {
    result <- as.data.frame(table(
        factor(sign(data[,x[1]] - data[,x[2]]), levels=c(0,1,-1), labels=c(0,1,2))
    ))
    colnames(result)[1] <- paste(x, collapse="|")
    return(result)
})
```

R Comparing each value of all pairs of columns

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