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How to use sapply

You can use sapply() similar to how you used lapply(). The first argument of sapply() is the list or vector X over which you want to apply a function, FUN. Potential additional arguments to this function are specified afterwards (...):

sapply(X, FUN, ...)

In the next couple of exercises, you'll be working with the variable temp, that contains temperature measurements for 7 days. temp is a list of length 7, where each element is a vector of length 5, representing 5 measurements on a given day. This variable has already been defined in the workspace: type str(temp) to see its structure.

This is a part of the course

“Intermediate R”

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Exercise instructions

  • Use lapply() to calculate the minimum (built-in function min()) of the temperature measurements for every day.
  • Do the same thing but this time with sapply(). See how the output differs.
  • Use lapply() to compute the the maximum (max()) temperature for each day.
  • Again, use sapply() to solve the same question and see how lapply() and sapply() differ.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# temp has already been defined in the workspace

# Use lapply() to find each day's minimum temperature


# Use sapply() to find each day's minimum temperature


# Use lapply() to find each day's maximum temperature


# Use sapply() to find each day's maximum temperature
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