How to change random number of random elements in a column by group in R?

I have the following data frame:

>df
Name
1 Ed
2 Ed
3 Bill
4 Tom
5 Tom
6 Tom
7 Ed
8 Bill
9 Bill
10 Bill


My goal is that from each group by "Name" change the "Name" values 25-75% of random rows to "Name"+"_X" (the remaining rows don't change). So the expected output is similar to:

   Name
1 Ed
2 Ed_X
3 Bill_X
4 Tom
5 Tom_X
6 Tom
7 Ed_X
8 Bill
9 Bill
10 Bill_X


I have tried with for cycle like this (a the moment, for 50% random rows:

for (n in unique(df$$Name)){ df[sample(which(dfName==n), nrow(df[dfName==id,])/2), 1] <- paste(df$$Name, "_X", sep="")
}


Unsuccessfully, however.

The idea is correct, even if you have a couple of mistakes in your code (like id is not defined, and inside paste you want to use just n, not df$Name). This is not super compressed code but it does the job: Name = c('Ed','Ed','Bill','Tom','Tom','Tom','Ed','Bill','Bill','Bill') df = data.frame(Name) for (n in unique(df$Name)){

# get indices
indices = which(df$Name==n) # sample size samp_size = round(length(df[df$Name==n,])/2)

# get indices to replace
samp = sample(indices, samp_size)

# need to set column as character
df$$Name = as.character(df$$Name)

# set new values
df[samp,] =  paste(n,'_X',sep='')

# set again column as factor
df$$Name = as.factor(df$$Name)
}


Out:

     Name
1      Ed
2    Ed_X
3    Bill
4   Tom_X
5   Tom_X
6     Tom
7    Ed_X
8    Bill
9  Bill_X
10 Bill_X

• If you want to select sample_size also randomly, you can use round(runif(1, min=25, max=75)) which will return an integer between 25 and 75, and then use this value to calculate samp_size Mar 30 '20 at 18:46