I have a data frame in long format, with one observation row per measurement. I want to loop through each unique ID and find the "minimum" date for each unique individual. For example, patient 1 may be measured at three different times, but I want the earliest time. I thought about sorting the dataset by the date (in increasing order) and removing all duplicates, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to go. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!