R Apply() function on specific dataframe columns

Question

I want to use the apply function on a dataframe, but only apply the function to the last 5 columns.

B<- by(wifi,(wifi$Room),FUN=function(y){apply(y, 2, A)         


        

Answer 1

Using an example data.frame and example function (just +1 to all values)

A <- function(x) x + 1
wifi <- data.frame(replicate(9,1:4))
wifi

#  X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9
#1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1
#2  2  2  2  2  2  2  2  2  2
#3  3  3  3  3  3  3  3  3  3
#4  4  4  4  4  4  4  4  4  4

data.frame(wifi[1:3], apply(wifi[4:9],2, A) )
#or
cbind(wifi[1:3], apply(wifi[4:9],2, A) )

#  X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9
#1  1  1  1  2  2  2  2  2  2
#2  2  2  2  3  3  3  3  3  3
#3  3  3  3  4  4  4  4  4  4
#4  4  4  4  5  5  5  5  5  5

Or even:

data.frame(wifi[1:3], lapply(wifi[4:9], A) )
#or
cbind(wifi[1:3], lapply(wifi[4:9], A) )

#  X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9
#1  1  1  1  2  2  2  2  2  2
#2  2  2  2  3  3  3  3  3  3
#3  3  3  3  4  4  4  4  4  4
#4  4  4  4  5  5  5  5  5  5