After multiple suggestions from SO users, I am finally trying to convert my code over to using data.tables. library(data.table) DT <- data.table(plate = paste0("plate",rep(1:2,each=5)), id = rep(c("CTRL","CTRL","ID1","ID2","ID3"),2), val = 1:10) > DT plate id val 1: plate1 CTRL 1 2: plate1 CTRL 2 3: plate1 ID1 3 4: plate1 ID2 4 5: plate1 ID3 5 6: plate2 CTRL 6 7: plate2 CTRL 7 8: plate2 ID1 8 9: plate2 ID2 9 10: plate2 ID3 10 What I would like to do is take the average of DT[,val] by plate when the id is "CTRL". I would normally aggregate the data frame, then use match to map the values back to a new column, 'ctrl'. Using the data.table package I can get: DT[id=="CTRL",ctrl:=mean(val),by=plate] > DT plate id val ctrl 1: plate1 CTRL 1 1.5 2: plate1 CTRL 2 1.5 3: plate1 ID1 3 NA 4: plate1 ID2 4 NA 5: plate1 ID3 5 NA 6: plate2 CTRL 6 6.5 7: plate2 CTRL 7 6.5 8: plate2 ID1 8 NA 9: plate2 ID2 9 NA 10: plate2 ID3 10 NA What I need is really: DT <- data.table(plate = paste0("plate",rep(1:2,each=5)), id = rep(c("CTRL","CTRL","ID1","ID2","ID3"),2), val = 1:10, ctrl = rep(c(1.5,6.5),each=5)) > DT plate id val ctrl 1: plate1 CTRL 1 1.5 2: plate1 CTRL 2 1.5 3: plate1 ID1 3 1.5 4: plate1 ID2 4 1.5 5: plate1 ID3 5 1.5 6: plate2 CTRL 6 6.5 7: plate2 CTRL 7 6.5 8: plate2 ID1 8 6.5 9: plate2 ID2 9 6.5 10: plate2 ID3 10 6.5 Eventually I would like to use much more complicated selections of the values, but I do not know how to select specific values, run some function, then map those values back to the appropriate row using data frames.