How to count in arrays?

Let's say I have two arrays

apple = [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8];
pear = [2 3 1 2 7 6 1 8];

I want to compare these arrays and count how many items in pear are bigger than the item at the same place in apple. How would I do this?

[the cyclist]

Sounds like homework. Here are a few hints:

• There is "greater than" operator in MATLAB, which will operate on vectors
• There is also an operator that will sum over a vector
• There is a docsearch command that will search the documentation

Answer 1

[Manoj]

x=sum(pear>apple);

[John D'Errico]

While this correct, I recall that it will be slightly faster to use nnz instead of sum.

x = nnz(pear > apple);

The difference will be small unless the arrays are significantly large.

pear = round(rand(1,1e7)*10);
apple = round(rand(1,1e7)*10);

timeit(@() sum(pear > apple))
ans =
      0.03888

timeit(@() nnz(pear > apple))
ans =
     0.023221