How to select last N observation from each group in dplyr dataframe?

As it is a specific question based on dplyr

1) after the group_by, use slice on the row_number()

library(tidyverse)
df %>% 
   group_by(a) %>% 
   slice(tail(row_number(), 2))
# A tibble: 8 x 2
# Groups:   a [4]
#      a      b
#  <dbl>  <dbl>
#1     1  343  
#2     1   54  
#3     2   55  
#4     2   62  
#5     3   59  
#6     3   -9  
#7     4    0  
#8     4   -0.5

---

2) Or use filter from dplyr

df %>% 
   group_by(a) %>% 
   filter(row_number() >= (n() - 1))

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3) or with do and tail

df %>%
    group_by(a) %>% 
    do(tail(., 2))

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4) In addition to the tidyverse, methods, we can also use compact data.table

library(data.table)
setDT(df)[df[, .I[tail(seq_len(.N), 2)], a]$V1]

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5) Or by from base R

by(df, df$a, FUN = tail, 2)

6) or with aggregate from base R

df[aggregate(c ~ a, transform(df, c = seq_len(nrow(df))), FUN = tail, 2)$c,]

7) or with split from base R

do.call(rbind, lapply(split(df, df$a), tail, 2))

A base R option using tapply is to subset the last two rows for every group.

df[unlist(tapply(1:nrow(df), df$a, tail, 2)), ]

#     a      b
#  <dbl>  <dbl>
#1     1  343  
#2     1   54  
#3     2   55  
#4     2   62  
#5     3   59  
#6     3   -9  
#7     4    0  
#8     4   -0.5

---

Or another option using ave

df[as.logical(with(df, ave(1:nrow(df), a, FUN = function(x) x %in% tail(x, 2)))), ]