Function output for each group and month

[meitei]

I have a function similar as given below.
I would like to get the mean for each group and month stored in a list.
I expected to get 36 outputs (12 for each GROUP) as a list.

library(dplyr)
set.seed(1000)
dat=data.frame(
  a=sample(1000,180),
   b=sample(1000,180),
   group=rep(1:3, each=60),
   month=rep(rep(1:12,each=5),3)
)

ab_function=function(grp,mon){
P=P[P$group==grp,]
P1=P[P$month==mon,]
var.smpl <- P1 %>% 
  mutate(ab=a*b)
rmvc=mean(var.smpl$ab)
return(rmvc)
}

how can I apply similar like lapply?

[valentingar]

As you are using dplyr anyway: There are excellent functions for grouping and subsetting and applying functions to your data in that package. The key functions you need are group_by() and group_map(). As your usecase is however, very easy with the function you provided, we can use summarise() instead:

library(dplyr)
set.seed(1000)
dat=data.frame(
  a=sample(1000,180),
  b=sample(1000,180),
  group=rep(1:3, each=60),
  month=rep(rep(1:12,each=5),3)
)

dat %>%
  group_by(group,month) %>% #define the cloumns to group by
  summarise(rmvc = mean(a*b)) #for each group, the new rmc will be calculated

#> `summarise()` has grouped output by 'group'. You can override using the `.groups` argument.
#> # A tibble: 36 x 3
#> # Groups:   group [3]
#>    group month    rmvc
#>    <int> <int>   <dbl>
#>  1     1     1 116478.
#>  2     1     2 224635.
#>  3     1     3 210373.
#>  4     1     4 256364.
#>  5     1     5 272303.
#>  6     1     6 494188 
#>  7     1     7 243766.
#>  8     1     8 225413.
#>  9     1     9 126456.
#> 10     1    10 308955.
#> # ... with 26 more rows

^{Created on 2022-01-02 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

For more complicated group-wise action (e.b. fitting a linear model to each subset) it could be useful to have a look at group_map(), for many usecases, however, summarise() is what you are looking for.
Hope this helps!

Best
Valentin