Similar to colMeans, colSums, etc, you could write a column maximum function, colMax, and a column sort function, colSort.
colMax <- function(data) sapply(data, max, na.rm = TRUE)
colSort <- function(data, ...) sapply(data, sort, ...)
I use ... in the second function in hopes of sparking your intrigue.
Get your data:
dat <- read.table(h=T, text = "Ozone Solar.R Wind Temp Month Day
1 41 190 7.4 67 5 1
2 36 118 8.0 72 5 2
3 12 149 12.6 74 5 3
4 18 313 11.5 62 5 4
5 NA NA 14.3 56 5 5
6 28 NA 14.9 66 5 6
7 23 299 8.6 65 5 7
8 19 99 13.8 59 5 8
9 8 19 20.1 61 5 9")
Use colMax function on sample data:
colMax(dat)
# Ozone Solar.R Wind Temp Month Day
# 41.0 313.0 20.1 74.0 5.0 9.0
To do the sorting on a single column,
sort(dat$Solar.R, decreasing = TRUE)
# [1] 313 299 190 149 118 99 19
and over all columns use our colSort function,
colSort(dat, decreasing = TRUE) ## compare with '...' above