Final answer:
The R code cbind(x, y) combines the numeric vectors x and y into a matrix with x and y as columns, resulting in option B) A matrix.
Step-by-step explanation:
When the R code provided is executed, the cbind(x, y) function combines the vectors x and y into a single structure. The vectors x containing the elements 1, 2, 3 and y containing the elements 10, 11, 12 are combined to form a two-dimensional matrix with these elements arranged in columns. Therefore, the correct answer to what cbind(x, y) yields is B) A matrix with x and y as columns.
This is consistent with the behavior of cbind in R programming, which stands for 'column bind’. Matrices in R are a collection of elements of the same data type (numeric, character, etc.) arranged in a two-dimensional rectangular layout. In this specific case, since both x and y are numeric vectors, they combine to form a numeric matrix.