R Programming Fundamentals

Creating Factor Variables in a Dataset

Herein, we will create factor variables in a dataset both one at a time and by using a method that converts multiple variables at once. In order to do so, the following steps have to be executed:

1. Load the datasets library:

library(datasets)

2. Load the midwest dataset and examine it with str():

data(midwest) str(midwest)

3. Convert the state variable to a factor by using as.factor():

midwest$state <- as.factor(midwest$state)

4. Load the band_instruments dataset and examine it with str():

data(band_instruments)str(band_instruments)

5. Transform both variables in band_instruments to factor variables using apply():

band_instruments <- data.frame(apply(band_instruments, 2, as.factor))

6. Double-check ...