Apply Functions

Raju N
 Apply functions
• Apply functions are a family of functions in base R which allow us
to repetitively perform an action on multiple chunks of data.
• An apply function is essentially a loop, but run faster than loops
and often require less code.
• The apply functions that discussed here are apply, lapply, sapply,
vapply, tapply, and mapply.
• There are so many different apply functions because they are
meant to operate on different types of data.
• apply() takes Data frame or matrix as an input and gives output in
vector, list or array.
• apply() Function is primarily used to avoid explicit uses of loop
constructs. 
 apply function
 Returns a vector or array or list of values
obtained by applying a function to margins of
an array or matrix.
• Syntax for Apply function in R:  
• apply(x,1,sum)
 Syntax - apply
• apply(x,1,sum)

• Where the first Argument X is a data frame or matrix

• Second argument 1 indicated Processing along rows .if it is

2 then it indicated processing along the columns

• Third Argument is some aggregate function like sum, mean

etc or some other user defined functions.
 
 Example
English<-c(56,34,67,33,25,28)
Maths<-c(78,67,56,44,56,89)
Science<-c(65, 71,67,67,66,81)
My_Data<-data.frame(English,Maths,Science)
My_Data
 Example
• apply(My_Data,1,sum)

• apply(My_Data,2,sum)

• apply(My_Data,2,mean)
 lapply function
• lapply function takes list, vector or Data frame
 as input and returns only list as output.
• lapply() function is useful for performing
operations on list objects and returns a list
object of same length of original set.
• lappy() returns a list of the similar length as
input list object, each element of which is the
result of applying FUN to the corresponding
element of list.
 lapply
• lapply(My_Data, mean)

• The lapply function applies mean function to

the columns of the dataframe.  
 sapply function
 sapply function takes list, vector or Data
frame  as input.
 It is similar to lapply function but returns only
vector as output.
 Example
• sapply(My_Data, function(My_Data)
My_Data/2)
• The sapply function divides the values in the
dataframe by 2.
 Example
• sapply(BMI_df, mean)

• The sapply function applies mean function to

the columns of the dataframe and the output
will be in the form of vector.  
 Example
• My_Data_1 <-
c("This","is","random","vector")
• sapply(My_Data_1,nchar)
 mapply function
 mapply is a multivariate version of sapply. mapply
applies FUN to the first elements of each (…) argument,
the second elements, the third elements, and so on.
• i.e. For when you have several data structures (e.g.
vectors, lists) and you want to apply a function to the
1st elements of each, and then the 2nd elements of
each, etc., coercing the result to a vector/array as
in sapply
• This is multivariate in the sense that your function must
accept multiple arguments.
 Examples
1. mapply(sum, 1:4, 1:4, 1:4)
mapply sums up all the first
elements(1+1+1) ,sums up all the, second
elements(2+2+2) and so on.

2. mapply(rep,1:4,1:4)
it repeats the first element once , second
element twice and so on.
 tapply function
 When we want to apply a function to subsets of
a vector and the subsets are defined by some
other vector, usually a factor.
• Let us consider famous iris data. Species is a
factor with 3 values namely Setosa,
versicolor and virginica.
• If we want to find the mean of sepal length of
these 3 species(subsets). we can use tapply
function
 Example
# tapply function in R
attach(iris)
# mean sepal length by species
tapply(iris$Sepal.Length, Species, mean)
Remark: First argument of tapply function takes the
vector for which we need to perform the function.
second argument is a vector by which we need to
perform the function and third argument is the
function, here it is mean.
• tapply() function
• tapply() computes a measure (mean, median,
min, max, etc..) or a function for each factor
variable in a vector. It is a very useful function
that lets you create a subset of a vector and
then apply some functions to each of the
subset.
 rapply
• rapply function in R is nothing but recursive
apply, as the name suggests it is used to apply
a function to all elements of a list recursively.
 Example
• # rapply function in R
• x=list(1,2,3,4)
• rapply(x,function(x){x^2},class=c("numeric"))
 Contd…
• first argument in the rapply function is the list,
here it is x.
• the second argument is the function that
needs to be applied over the list.
• last argument gives the classes to which the
function should be applied
x=list(3,list(4,5),6,list(7,list(8,9)))
str(x)
rapply(x,function(x) x^2,class=c("numeric"))

Remark: rapply function is applied even for the

sublists.
 vapply

• vapply function in R is similar to sapply, but

has a pre-specified type of return value, so it
can be safer (and sometimes faster) to use.
 Example
# vapply function in R
vapply(1:5, sqrt, 1i)