What's a factor and why would you use it? (2)
To create factors in R, you make use of the function factor(). First thing that you have to do is create a vector that contains all the observations that belong to a limited number of categories. For example, sex_vector contains the sex of 5 different individuals:
sex_vector <- c("Male","Female","Female","Male","Male")
It is clear that there are two categories, or in R-terms 'factor levels', at work here: "Male" and "Female".
The function factor() will encode the vector as a factor:
factor_sex_vector <- factor(sex_vector)
This exercise is part of the course
Introduction to R
Exercise instructions
- Convert the character vector
sex_vectorto a factor withfactor()and assign the result tofactor_sex_vector - Print out
factor_sex_vectorand assert that R prints out the factor levels below the actual values.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Sex vector
sex_vector <- c("Male", "Female", "Female", "Male", "Male")
# Convert sex_vector to a factor
factor_sex_vector <-
# Print out factor_sex_vector