Neglected R Super Functions

R has a lot of under-appreciated super powerful functions. I list a few of our favorites below.

Atlas, carrying the sky. Royal Palace (Paleis op de Dam), Amsterdam.

Photo: Dominik Bartsch, CC some rights reserved.

• stats::approx(): approximate a curve/function.
• base::cumsum(): cumulative ordered sum.
• stats::ecdf(): estimate the cumulative distribution function.
• base::findInterval(): assign values to bins.
• base::match(): bulk computation of first match. Can lookup and sort data and even find non-duplicate data.
• base::Reduce(): nifty functional method to combine multiple function evaluations.
• base::tapply(): grouped summary function.
• base::unlist(): build arrays of atomic values from more complicated nested structures.
• base::Vectorize(): Convert scalar functions into functions ready to operate on arrays.

We would love to hear about some of your favorites.