Summarise Overlapping and Contiguous Time Intervals

Summarise rows in a dataset where the start of the next interval is (nearly) equal to the end of the current interval, indicating they are contiguous. This is useful for simplifying sequences of adjacent time intervals into broader continuous spans. It also summarises over time intervals if they overlap.

Usage

summarise_overlapping_time(.data, start, end, tolerance = 0)

Arguments

.data

A data frame containing at least the start and end time columns.

start

The name of the column indicating start times. Defaults to "start_time".

end

The name of the column indicating end times. Defaults to "end_time".

tolerance

A numeric value indicating the maximum difference between the end of one interval and the start of the next interval to consider them contiguous. Defaults to 0.

Value

A data frame with collapsed contiguous time intervals, where each row represents a continuous span.

Examples

df <- data.frame(
  start_time = c(1, 2, 4, 5),
  end_time = c(2, 3, 5, 6)
)
summarise_overlapping_time(
  df,
  start = start_time,
  end = end_time
)
#> # A tibble: 2 × 2
#>   start_time end_time
#>        <dbl>    <dbl>
#> 1          1        3
#> 2          4        6