How can I take pairwise parallel maximum between two vectors?

Question

Suppose I have two vectors in R, defined as follows.

a = c(3,3,5) b = c(2,4,6) 

Is there a function that will give me the pairwise maximum between the elements of a and the elements of b, which can be run inside a formula?

I tried to do, max(a, b) but it does not get the desired output.

Desired Output:

C(3,4,6) 

Actual output:

6 

Answer 1

Pairwise maximum, pmax(a, b), will give c(3,4,6).

a <- c(3,3,5,NA,1) b <- c(2,4,6,0,NA)  pmax(a, b) # [1]  3  4  6 NA NA  pmax(a, b, na.rm = TRUE) # [1] 3 4 6 0 1 

There is also a pairwise minimum

pmin(a, b) # [1]  2  3  5 NA NA  pmin(a, b, na.rm = TRUE) # [1] 2 3 5 0 1 

And a pairwise sum, which I pulled from this question/answer has been very useful to me at times:

psum(a, b) # == a + b # [1]  5  7 11 NA NA  psum(a, b, na.rm = TRUE) # [1]  5  7 11  0  1  psum(c(-1, NA, 4), c(0, NA, NA)) # [1] -1 NA NA  psum(c(-1, NA, 4), c(0, NA, NA), na.rm = TRUE) # [1] -1 NA  4  psum <- function(..., na.rm = FALSE) {   dat <- do.call(cbind, list(...))   res <- rowSums(dat, na.rm = na.rm)    idx_na <- !rowSums(!is.na(dat))   res[idx_na] <- NA   res  }