get_mode {SwimmeR}

Find the mode (most commonly occurring) element of a list

Description

Determines which element of list appears most frequently. Based on base::which.max(), so if multiple values appear with the same frequency will return the first one. Ignores NA values. In the context of swimming data is often used to clean team names, as in the Lilly King example below.

Usage

get_mode(x, type = "first")

Arguments

x

A list. NA elements will be ignored.

type

a character string of either "first" or "all" which determines behavior for ties. Setting type = "first" (the default) will return the element that appears most often and appears first in list x. Setting type = "all" will return all elements that appear most frequently.

Value

the element of x which appears most frequently. Ties go to the lowest index, so the element which appears first.

Examples

a <- c("a", "a", "b", "c")
get_mode(a)
ab <- c("a", "a", "b", "b", "c") # returns "a", not "b"
get_mode(ab)
#' ab <- c("a", "a", "b", "b", "c") # returns "a" and "b"
get_mode(ab, type = "all")
a_na <- c("a", "a", NA, NA, "c")
get_mode(a_na)
numbs <- c(1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, NA)
get_mode(numbs, type = "all")

Name <- c(rep("Lilly King", 5))
Team <- c(rep("IU", 2), "Indiana", "IUWSD", "Indiana University")
df <- data.frame(Name, Team, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
df$Team <- get_mode(df$Team)