R: Avoid apply() with Large Datasets

George Pipis walks us through the performance cost of using the apply() function against a large dataset in R:

When we are dealing with large datasets and there is a need to calculate some values like the row/column min/max/rank/mean etc we should avoid the apply function because it takes a lot of time. Instead, we can use the matrixStats package and its corresponding functions. Let’s provide some comparisons.

Click through for a demonstration of how much slower it can be in certain cases. H/T R-Bloggers.