Using data.table to Add Aggregate Values to Data Frames

John Mount shows how you can combine := and by in the data.table package to add a new column with the results of an aggregation in R:

The “by” signals we are doing a per-group calculation, and the “:=” signals to land the results in the original data.table. This sort of window function is incredibly useful in computing things such as what fraction of a group’s mass is in each row.

It’s worth reading up on data.table if you aren’t familiar with the great things it can do.