Speed of vectorized operation dependent of number of columns of data.frame

Question

Why does it take longer to operate a comparison on a data.frame with the same number of elements, but arranged in more columns on vectorized operations? Take this simple exa

Answer 1

when comparing df1 to df2 to df3: by changing the number of rows yet holding the total number of elements constant you are consequently changing the number of columns.

each column in a data.frame is a list. Each data.frame in your example has an order of magnitude more columns, hence and order of magnitude more operations, and thus time.