which.max ties method in R
Solution 1
You could do like this:
x<-c(1,2,1,4,3,4)
#identical to which.max, except returns all indices with max
which(x==max(x))
[1] 4 6
z<-which(x==max(x))
z[length(z)]
[1] 6
#or with tail
tail(which(x==max(x)),1)
[1] 6
edit:
Or, you could also use max.col
function for vectors like this:
max.col(t(x),"last")
[1] 6
#or
max.col(matrix(x,nrow=1),"last")
[1] 6
edit: Some benchmarking:
x<-sample(1:1000,size=10000,replace=TRUE)
library(microbenchmark)
microbenchmark(which.max(x),{z<-which(x==max(x));z[length(z)]},
tail(which(x==max(x)),1),max.col(matrix(x,nrow=1),"last"),
max.col(t(x),"last"),which.max(rev(x)),times=1000)
Unit: microseconds
expr min lq median uq max neval
which.max(x) 29.390 30.323 30.323 31.256 17550.276 1000
{ z <- which(x == max(x)) z[length(z)] } 40.586 42.452 42.919 44.318 631.178 1000
tail(which(x == max(x)), 1) 57.380 60.646 61.579 64.844 596.657 1000
max.col(matrix(x, nrow = 1), "last") 134.353 138.085 139.485 144.383 710.949 1000
max.col(t(x), "last") 116.159 119.425 121.291 125.956 729.610 1000
which.max(rev(x)) 89.569 91.435 92.368 96.566 746.404 1000
So all methods seem to be slower than the original (which gives wrong result), but z <- which(x == max(x));z[length(z)]
seems to be fastest option of these.
Solution 2
You could reverse x
which.max(rev(x))
which.min(rev(x))
Solution 3
The which
function has an 'arr.ind' parameter normally set to FALSE but usefully set to TRUE in this case:
x <- sample(1:20, 50, repl=TRUE)
> which(x==max(x), arr.ind=TRUE)
[1] 11 23
> tail(which(x==max(x), arr.ind=TRUE) , 1)
[1] 23
Using the arr.ind argument is particularly useful with matrix or array structures, but it does work with atomic vectors as well.
Solution 4
To expand on Jouni's answer, you could instead use max
on the result of which
:
x <- c(1, 2, 1, 4, 3, 4)
which(x == max(x))
[1] 4 6
max(which(x == max(x)))
[1] 6
Benchmarking:
x <- sample(1:1000, size = 10000, replace = TRUE)
library(microbenchmark)
microbenchmark(which.max(x), {z <- which(x == max(x)); z[length(z)]},
tail(which(x == max(x)), 1), max.col(matrix(x, nrow = 1), "last"),
max.col(t(x), "last"), which.max(rev(x)), max(which(x == max(x))), times = 1000)
Unit: microseconds
expr min lq mean median uq max neval
which.max(x) 6.322 6.717 7.171838 7.112 7.112 40.297 1000
{ z <- which(x == max(x)) z[length(z)] } 27.260 28.445 37.126964 28.840 29.630 2276.346 1000
tail(which(x == max(x)), 1) 35.952 37.927 45.198484 38.718 40.298 1005.038 1000
max.col(matrix(x, nrow = 1), "last") 160.791 162.766 181.698171 163.557 169.087 1688.494 1000
max.col(t(x), "last") 84.149 86.124 100.249921 86.915 89.680 1230.618 1000
which.max(rev(x)) 53.729 55.310 69.442985 56.100 57.680 1076.149 1000
max(which(x == max(x))) 26.865 27.655 35.552256 28.050 28.841 1029.137 1000
Omar Wagih
Updated on May 04, 2020Comments
-
Omar Wagih about 4 years
which.max
andwhich.min
will return the smallest index of the max or min value if there are ties.Is there a way around this so that the largest index is returned without affecting the efficiency of the function?
max.col
has this exact functionality, but I am dealing with a vector not a matrix. -
Omar Wagih about 11 yearsBenchmarking is beautiful! Thank you, I think I'll go with option 2! ` z <- which(x == max(x)) z[length(z)]`
-
Arun about 11 yearsDWin, is there a difference in setting
arr.ind=TRUE
for vectors? -
IRTFM about 11 yearsI don't think so. I probably should just have used
which
. Sometimes I over-think.