Dplyr: “Error in n(): function should not be called directly”

558 Asked by KiraMcelvain in Data Science , Asked on Jun 6, 2021

I am attempting to reproduce one of the examples in the dplyr package but this error message. I am expecting to see a new column n produced with the frequency of each combination. Can someone tell me what I am missing? I triple checked that the package is loaded. Thanks for the help, as always.

 library(dplyr)
# summarise peels off a single layer of grouping
by_vs_am <- group_by(mtcars, vs, am)
by_vs <- summarise(by_vs_am, n = n())
Error in n() : This function should not be called directly

Answered by Jane Fisher

To solve error: this function should not be called directly, you can try the following:

Make sure you load plyr first

Both dplyr and plyr have the functions summarise/summarize. Look at the outcomes of conflicts() to see masked objects.

Use summarize with the package, something like this

dplyr::summarize(count = n())

 You can run this command to unload the plyr package.

detach("package:plyr", unload=TRUE) 

Then you can continue as expected.

library(dplyr) 

...

summarise(n = n())

Dplyr: “Error in n(): function should not be called directly”

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