Ordering by a strange column with highest at top

Question

I have an odd set of data with a weirdly named column, I want to order this data frame by that column with the highest values at the top.

Colnames:

[1] "budget"                "company"               "country"               "director"              "genre"                 "gross"                 "name"                  "rating"               


[9] "released"              "runtime"               "score"                 "star"                  "votes"                 "writer"                "year"                  "gross to budget ratio"

I want to order by the highest gross to budget ratio but I don't understand how to do that. I also am having a hard time understand the order function and how to select what I want to order by.

You'll need to show us some data, just do `dput(head(nameofdf))` where nameofdf is name of your data frame. — arg0naut91, Mar 02 '19 at 19:35
Possible duplicate of [How to sort a dataframe by multiple column(s)?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1296646/how-to-sort-a-dataframe-by-multiple-columns) — markus, Mar 02 '19 at 19:40

cdtip · Answer 1 · 2019-03-02T19:51:19.523

2

The error you are getting is probably from not linking the object correctly. You have to specify the vector within the dataframe in the function.

Try:

orderedData <- data[order(-data$gross to budget ratio),]

Also, I don't typically use spaces in my column names and I can't remember if it throws errors for that, so you may actually have to do with 'col name' it as:

orderedData <- data[order(-data$`gross to budget ratio`),]

Either way, if you just type data$ and then tab, you can just select your column from there and it should do it correctly.

Edit: Backticks are needed in that format, thanks Gregor.

edited Mar 02 '19 at 19:51

answered Mar 02 '19 at 19:42

cdtip

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Definitely won't work with `$` and no backticks. Options are `data[, "gross to budget ratio"]` or `data$\`gross to budget ratio\`` to refer to the column. – Gregor Thomas Mar 02 '19 at 19:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '19 at 19:31

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Assuming your dataframe is named data, you can use the following code.

orderedData <- data[order(gross to budget ratio),]  # ascending order
orderedData <- data[order(-gross to budget ratio),] # descending order

It will order your dataframe and stores in a new dataframe named orderedData.

answered Mar 02 '19 at 19:31

Iago Carvalho

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I keep getting Error in order(-`gross to budget ratio`) : object 'gross to budget ratio' not found but I get the same error even with the other columns – Bailey Miller Mar 02 '19 at 19:32
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try: orderedData – Soren Mar 02 '19 at 19:38
Try `orderedData – R. Schifini Mar 02 '19 at 19:41
I actually moved to use the arrange function but this helped me understand how to select the data. – Bailey Miller Mar 02 '19 at 20:00

Ordering by a strange column with highest at top

2 Answers2