The range is the difference between the largest and the smallest value in a dataset.
We can use the following syntax to find the range of a dataset in R:
data #calculate range max(data, na.rm=TRUE) - min(data, na.rm=TRUE) [1] 28
And we can use the range() function in base R to display the smallest and largest values in the dataset:
data #calculate range values range(data, na.rm=TRUE) [1] 1 29
This tutorial shows several examples of how to calculate the range of datasets in R.
Related: Measures of Dispersion in Statistics
Example 1: Calculate the Range of a Single Variable
The following code shows how to calculate the range of a single variable in R:
#create data frame df frame(x=c(1, 3, NA, 5, 16, 18, 22, 25), y=c(NA, 4, 8, 9, 14, 23, 29, 31), z=c(2, NA, 9, 4, 13, 17, 22, 24)) #find range of variable x in the data frame max(df$x, na.rm=TRUE) - min(df$x, na.rm=TRUE) [1] 24
Example 2: Calculate the Range of Multiple Variables
The following code shows how to calculate the range of multiple variables in R:
#create data frame df frame(x=c(1, 3, NA, 5, 16, 18, 22, 25), y=c(NA, 4, 8, 9, 14, 23, 29, 31), z=c(2, NA, 9, 4, 13, 17, 22, 24)) #find range of variable x and y in the data frame sapply(df[c('x','y')], function(df) max(df, na.rm=TRUE) - min(df, na.rm=TRUE)) x y 24 27 #find range of all variables in the data frame sapply(df, function(df) max(df, na.rm=TRUE) - min(df, na.rm=TRUE)) x y z 24 27 22
Related A Guide to apply(), lapply(), sapply(), and tapply() in R
Example 3: Calculate the Range of Entire Data Frame
The following code shows how to calculate the range of all values in a data frame:
#create data frame df #find range of all values in entire data frame max(df, na.rm=TRUE) - min(df, na.rm=TRUE) [1] 30
In this example, the range of the entire data frame turned out to be 31 – 1 = 30.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R:
How to Calculate Interquartile Range in R
How to Calculate Standard Deviation in R
How to Calculate Percentiles in R