How to Find the Max Value in Each Row in R

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You can use the following basic syntax to find the max value in each row of a data frame in R:

df$max rm=TRUE)

This particular syntax creates a new column called max that contains the max value in each row of the data frame.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: Find the Max Across Specific Columns

Suppose we have the following data frame in R:

#create data frame
df frame(points=c(4, NA, 10, 2, 15, NA, 7, 22),
                 rebounds=c(NA, 3, 9, 7, 6, 8, 14, 10),
                 assists=c(10, 9, 4, 4, 3, 7, 10, 11))

#view data frame
df

  points rebounds assists
1      4       NA      10
2     NA        3       9
3     10        9       4
4      2        7       4
5     15        6       3
6     NA        8       7
7      7       14      10
8     22       10      11

We can use the following syntax to create a new column called max that contains the max value in each row:

#add new column that contains max value in each row
df$max rm=TRUE)

#view updated data frame
df

  points rebounds assists max
1      4       NA      10  10
2     NA        3       9   9
3     10        9       4  10
4      2        7       4   7
5     15        6       3  15
6     NA        8       7   8
7      7       14      10  14
8     22       10      11  22

The new column called max contains the max contains the max value in each row.

Note: If you don’t include na.rm=TRUE within the apply() function, then NA values will be returned if they exist anywhere in the row.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R:

How to Calculate the Mean by Group in R
How to Average Across Columns in R
How to Sum Specific Columns in R