| Extremes {base} | R Documentation |
Returns the (parallel) maxima and minima of the input values.
max(..., na.rm = FALSE)
min(..., na.rm = FALSE)
pmax(..., na.rm = FALSE)
pmin(..., na.rm = FALSE)
pmax.int(..., na.rm = FALSE)
pmin.int(..., na.rm = FALSE)
... |
numeric or character arguments (see Note). |
na.rm |
a logical indicating whether missing values should be removed. |
max and min return the maximum or minimum of all
the values present in their arguments, as integer if
all are logical or integer, as double if
all are numeric, and character otherwise.
If na.rm is FALSE an NA value in any of the
arguments will cause a value of NA to be returned, otherwise
NA values are ignored.
The minimum and maximum of a numeric empty set are +Inf and
-Inf (in this order!) which ensures transitivity, e.g.,
min(x1, min(x2)) == min(x1, x2). For numeric x
max(x) == -Inf and min(x) == +Inf
whenever length(x) == 0 (after removing missing values if
requested). However, pmax and pmin return
NA if all the parallel elements are NA even for
na.rm = TRUE.
pmax and pmin take one or more vectors (or matrices) as
arguments and return a single vector giving the ‘parallel’
maxima (or minima) of the vectors. The first element of the result is
the maximum (minimum) of the first elements of all the arguments, the
second element of the result is the maximum (minimum) of the second
elements of all the arguments and so on. Shorter inputs are recycled
if necessary. attributes (such as names or
dim) are transferred from the first argument (if
applicable).
pmax.int and pmin.int are faster internal versions only
used when all arguments are atomic vectors and there are no classes:
they drop all attributes. (Note that all versions fail for raw and
complex vectors since these have no ordered.)
max and min are generic functions: methods can be
defined for them individually or via the
Summary group generic. For this to
work properly, the arguments ... should be unnamed, and
dispatch is on the first argument.
By definition the min/max of any vector containing an NaN is
NaN, except that the min/max of any vector containing an
NA is NA even if it also contains an NaN. Note
that max(NA, Inf) == NA even though the maximum would be
Inf whatever the missing value actually is.
The max/min of an empty character vector is a character NA.
(One could argue that as "" is the smallest character element,
the maximum should be "", but there is no obvious candidate for
the minimum.)
For min or max, a length-one vector. For pmin or
pmax, a vector of length the longest of the input vectors.
The type of the result will be that of the highest of the inputs in the hierarchy integer < real < character.
For min and max if there are only numeric inputs and all
are empty (after possible removal of NAs), the result is double
(Inf or -Inf).
max and min are part of the S4
Summary group generic. Methods
for them must use the signature x, ..., na.rm.
‘Numeric’ arguments are vectors of type integer and numeric,
and logical (coerced to integer). For historical reasons, NULL
is accepted as equivalent to integer(0).
pmax and pmin will also work on classed objects with
appropriate methods for comparison, is.na and rep (if
recycling of arguments is needed).
Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.
range (both min and max) and
which.min (which.max) for the arg min,
i.e., the location where an extreme value occurs.
‘plotmath’ for the use of min in plot annotation.
require(stats); require(graphics)
min(5:1, pi) #-> one number
pmin(5:1, pi) #-> 5 numbers
x <- sort(rnorm(100)); cH <- 1.35
pmin(cH, quantile(x)) # no names
pmin(quantile(x), cH) # has names
plot(x, pmin(cH, pmax(-cH, x)), type='b', main= "Huber's function")