How to “unmelt” data with reshape r

Question

I have a data frame that I melted using the reshape package that I would like to "un melt".

here is a toy example of the melted data (real data frame is 500x100 or larger) :

variable<-c(rep("X1",3),rep("X2",3),rep("X3",3))
value<-c(rep(rnorm(1,.5,.2),3),rep(rnorm(1,.5,.2),3),rep(rnorm(1,.5,.2),3))
dat <-data.frame(variable,value)
dat
 variable     value
1       X1 0.5285376
2       X1 0.5285376
3       X1 0.5285376
4       X2 0.1694908
5       X2 0.1694908
6       X2 0.1694908
7       X3 0.7446906
8       X3 0.7446906
9       X3 0.7446906

Each variable (X1, X2,X3) has values estimated at 3 different times (which in this toy example happen to be the same, but this is never the case).

I would like to get it (back) in the form of :

     X1        X2        X3
1 0.5285376 0.1694908 0.7446906
2 0.5285376 0.1694908 0.7446906
3 0.5285376 0.1694908 0.7446906

Basically, I would like the variable column to be sorted on ID (X1, X2 etc) and become column headings. I have tried various permutations of cast, dcast, recast, etc.. and cant seem to get the data in the format that I want. It was easy enough to 'melt' data from the wide form to the longer form (eg the dat datset), but getting it back is proving difficult. Any ideas? I know this is relatively simple, but I am having a hard time conceptualizing how to do this in reshape or reshape2.

Thanks, LP

Answer 1

I typically do this by creating an id column and then using dcast :

> dat
  variable     value
1       X1 0.4299397
2       X1 0.4299397
3       X1 0.4299397
4       X2 0.2531551
5       X2 0.2531551
6       X2 0.2531551
7       X3 0.3972119
8       X3 0.3972119
9       X3 0.3972119
> dat$id <- rep(1:3,times = 3)
> dcast(data = dat,formula = id~variable,fun.aggregate = sum,value.var = "value")
  id        X1        X2        X3
1  1 0.4299397 0.2531551 0.3972119
2  2 0.4299397 0.2531551 0.3972119
3  3 0.4299397 0.2531551 0.3972119

Answer 2

Depending on how robust you need this to be , the following will correctly cast for varying number of occurrences of variables (and in any order).

> variable<-c(rep("X1",5),rep("X2",4),rep("X3",3))
> value<-c(rep(rnorm(1,.5,.2),5),rep(rnorm(1,.5,.2),4),rep(rnorm(1,.5,.2),3))
> dat <-data.frame(variable,value)
> dat <- dat[order(rnorm(nrow(dat))),]
> dat
   variable     value
11       X3 1.0294454
8        X2 0.6147509
2        X1 0.3537012
7        X2 0.6147509
9        X2 0.6147509
5        X1 0.3537012
4        X1 0.3537012
12       X3 1.0294454
3        X1 0.3537012
1        X1 0.3537012
10       X3 1.0294454
6        X2 0.6147509
> dat$id = numeric(nrow(dat))
> for (i in 1:nrow(dat)){
+   dat_temp <- dat[1:i,]
+   dat[i,]$id <- nrow(dat_temp[dat_temp$variable == dat[i,]$variable,])
+ }
> cast(dat, id~variable, value = 'value')
  id        X1        X2       X3
1  1 0.3537012 0.6147509 1.029445
2  2 0.3537012 0.6147509 1.029445
3  3 0.3537012 0.6147509 1.029445
4  4 0.3537012 0.6147509       NA
5  5 0.3537012        NA       NA