recode categorial vars into binary data

First off, stop using cbind() when it is not needed. You will not see the reason 
when the columns are all numeric but you will start experiencing pain and puzzlement 
when the arguments are of mixed classes. The data.frame function will do what you want. 
(Where do people pick up this practice anyway?)

Maybe from help( data.frame)?

It's in most of the  examples and is not needed ...

 L3 <- LETTERS[1:3]
     (d <- data.frame(cbind(x=1, y=1:10), fac=sample(L3, 10, replace=TRUE)))
     
     ## The same with automatic column names:
     data.frame(cbind(  1,   1:10),     sample(L3, 10, replace=TRUE))
     

Chris

Chris Stubben

Los Alamos National Lab
Bioscience Division
MS M888
Los Alamos, NM 87545