wrong data interpretation in R
Also when reading a CSV file, if you do not want characters columns converted to factors, use 'as.is = TRUE' as one of the parameters. If you have a column that is a factor, to convert it to numeric you have to do the following: as.numeric(as.character(factorColumn)) notice that you have to convert it to character first; otherwise you will get the numeric value of the factor which is probably not what you want.
On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Sarah Goslee <sarah.goslee at gmail.com> wrote:
Most likely there's something amiss in your csv file: R won't convert numeric data to factors unless there are non-numeric characters included. First check your csv file for errors. If that doesn't solve your problem, please provide a reproducible example. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example Sarah On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 10:59 AM, EcoFranc <robrit at gmx.de> wrote:
Hi, maybe somebody would be kind enough to help a bloody and unprofessional beginner like me (and I hope I did not overlook the answer to my question on the website). I've imported a csv data frame into R, but I can't run a regression because R interprets 4 out of 5 variables as factors (rather than numeric vectors). I tried the as.numeric() command, but R says it is invalid to change the storage mode of a factor. Is there any way to change the mode of a factor into numeric. I am very grateful for help. Thank you very much, Robert.
-- Sarah Goslee http://www.functionaldiversity.org
______________________________________________ R-help at r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Jim Holtman Data Munger Guru What is the problem that you are trying to solve? Tell me what you want to do, not how you want to do it.