`max`

Introduction

max is one of many simple numerical functions you can use to analyze a vector in R. It returns the maximum value in a vector or column in a data.frame.

Some additional applications of this include comparing the maximum values between columns, finding the maximum value of a row, and finding a string that’s alphabetically last in a list.

Examples

What is the biggest value in the vector `weights`?

weights <- c(147, 280, 180, 190, 145)
max(weights)

[1] 280

What is the largest response over an `experiment` data.frame with `trial1`, `trial2`, and `trial3` as its trial columns?

max(c(experiment$trial1, experiment$trial2, experiment$trial3))

[1] 87

How do we get the maximum value a vector if not all of its values are filled in?

vec <- c(NA, 45, 444, 13, 98, NA)
max(vec, na.rm = TRUE)

[1] 444

If we don’t include the na.rm = TRUE argument, the function will only return NA and we won’t get any meaningful information out of the code.

What is the last word in alphabetical order in the vector `sentence`?

sentence <- c('I', 'thought', 'red', 'would', 'have', 'felt', 'warmer', 'in', 'the', 'summer')
max(sentence)

[1] "would"