Conditions & Subtraction from Matrix in R - r

Question

I've looked at R create a vector from conditional operation on matrix, and using a similar solution does not yield what I want (and I'm not sure why).
My goal is to evaluate df with the following condition: if df > 2, df -2, else 0
Take df:
a <- seq(1,5)
b <- seq(0,4)
df <- cbind(a,b) %>% as.data.frame()
df is simply:
a b
1 0
2 1
3 2
4 3
5 4
df_final should look like this after a suitable function:
a b
0 0
0 0
1 0
2 1
3 2
I applied the following function with the result, and I'm not sure why it doesn't work (further explanation of a solution would be appreciated)
apply(df,2,function(df){
ifelse(any(df>2),df-2,0)
})
Yielding the following:
a b
-1 -2
Thank you SO community!

Answer 1

Let's fix your function and understand why it didn't work:
apply(df, # apply to df
2, # to each *column* of df
function(df){ # this function. Call the function argument (each column) df
# (confusing because this is the same name as the data frame...)
ifelse( # Looking at each column...
any(df > 2), # if there are any values > 2
df - 2, # then df - 2
0 # otherwise 0
)
})
any() returns a single value. ifelse() returns something the same shape as the test, so by making your test any(df > 2) (a single value), ifelse() will also return a single value.
Let's fix this by (a) changing the function to be of a different name than the input (for readability) and (b) getting rid of the any:
apply(df, # apply to df
2, # to each *column* of df
function(x){ # this function. Call the function argument (each column) x
ifelse( # Looking at each column...
x > 2, # when x is > 2
df - 2, # make it x - 2
0 # otherwise 0
)
})
apply is made for working on matrices. When you give it a data frame, the first thing it does is convert it to a matrix. If you want the result to be a data frame, you need to convert it back to a data frame.
Or we can use lapply instead. lapply returns a list, and by assigning it to the columns of df with df[] <- lapply(), we won't need to convert. (And since lapply doesn't do the matrix conversion, it knows by default to apply the function to each column.)
df[] <- lapply(df, function(x) ifelse(x > 2, x - 2, 0))
As a side note, df <- cbind(a,b) %>% as.data.frame() is a more complicated way of writing df <- data.frame(a, b)

Answer 2

Create the 'out' dataset by subtracting 2, then replace the values that are based on a logical condition to 0
out <- df - 2
out[out < 0] <- 0
Or in a single step
(df-2) * ((df - 2) > 0)

Answer 3

Using apply
a <- seq(1,5)
b <- seq(0,4)
df <- cbind(a,b) %>% as.data.frame()
new_matrix <- apply(df, MARGIN=2,function(i)ifelse(i >2, i-2,0))
new_matrix
###if you want it to return a tibble/df
new_tibble <- apply(df, MARGIN=2,function(i)ifelse(i >2, i-2,0)) %>% as_tibble()