[Rd] Improved Data Aggregation and Summary Statistics in R

[Sebastian Martin Krantz]

Dear Developers,

Having spent time developing and thinking about how data aggregation and
summary statistics can be enhanced in R, I would like to present my
ideas/efforts in the form of two commands:

The first, which for now I called 'collap', is an upgrade of aggregate that
accommodates and extends the functionality of aggregate in various
respects, most importantly to work with multilevel and multi-type data,
multiple function calls, highly customized aggregation tasks, a much
greater flexibility in the passing of inputs and tidy output.

The second function, 'qsu', is an advanced and flexible summary command for
cross-sectional and multilevel (panel) data (i.e. it can provide overall,
between and within entities statistics, and allows for grouping, custom
functions and transformations). It also provides a quick method to compute
and output within-transformed data.

Both commands are efficiently built from core R, but provide for optional
integration with data.table, which renders them extremely fast on large
datasets. An explanation of the syntax, a demonstration and benchmark
results are provided in the attached vignette.

Since both commands accommodate existing functionality while adding
significant basic functionality, I though that their addition to the stats
package would be a worthwhile consideration. I am happy for your feedback.

Best regards,

Sebastian Krantz

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