restrict_n {healthdb}

Remove or flag groups with n less than some number

Description

Remove or flags groups or clients that have less than some number of rows or some number of distinct values in a variable. For example, it can be used to remove clients that had less than n visits to some service on different dates from some administrative records. It offers filtering with dplyr::n_distinct() functionality for database input.

Usage

restrict_n(
  data,
  clnt_id,
  n_per_clnt,
  count_by = NULL,
  mode = c("flag", "filter"),
  verbose = getOption("healthdb.verbose")
)

Arguments

data

Data.frames or remote tables (e.g., from dbplyr::tbl_sql())

clnt_id

Grouping variable (quoted/unquoted).

n_per_clnt

A single number specifying the minimum number of group size.

count_by

Another variable dictating the counting unit of n_per_clnt. The default is NULL meaning the inclusion criteria is the number of row, i.e., dplyr::n() >= n_per_clnt. If it is not NULL, the criteria becomes equivalent to dplyr::n_distinct(count_by) >= n_per_clnt.

mode

Either "flag" - add a new column 'flag_restrict_n' indicating if the client met the condition (all rows from a qualified client would have flag = 1), or "filter" - remove clients that did not meet the condition from the data. Default is "flag".

verbose

A logical for whether to explain the query and report how many groups were removed. Default is fetching from options. Use options(healthdb.verbose = FALSE) to suppress once and for all. Reporting is not for remote tables as the query is not executed immediately, thus no result is available for summary without adding an extra run (may be slow) of the query.

Value

A subset of input data satisfied the group size requirement, or raw input data with an new flag column.

See Also

dplyr::n(), dplyr::n_distinct()

Examples

# flag cyl groups with less than 8 cars
restrict_n(mtcars, clnt_id = cyl, n_per_clnt = 8, mode = "flag") %>%
head()

#remove cyl groups with less than 2 types of gear boxes
restrict_n(mtcars, clnt_id = cyl, n_per_clnt = 3, count_by = gear, mode = "filter")