[R] Problems with levels of factors

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Uli Flenker; Raum 704 wrote:

> Dear R-helpers,
> 
> I frequently run into problems when I modify elements of factors (R 1.0.0,
> Linux 2.0.25).  For example, after splitting a data frame accordinng to

That's already two versions old, three come next Tuesday.

> whatever criterion, it might well happen that not all levels of a factor
> are present in all new data frames. However, R doesn't seem to care about. 
> When performing some kind of analysis seperately on the new frames, each
> time the unreduced number of levels is present.
> 
> That can be very problematic, as a lot of methods tend to crash because no
> data are found for the "lost" level. 
> 
> Neither explicit setting of "data=data.frame.xyz" nor any straightforward
> use of "detach()" or "attach()" nor
> "levels(problem.factor)<-c("reduced","levels", ...)" did help.
> 
> In the latter case I obtain 
> 
> 	Error in levels<-.factor(*tmp*, value = c("A", "B")) : 
> 		number of levels differs
> 
> no matter whether the relevant data.frame is attached to the search list
> or not, no matter whether the number of levels is appropriate in that data
> frame and no matter whether an "extra" factor of the name exists or not.
> 
> I also tried to modify the attributes of the problematic factors
> explicitly without succes.
> 
> The persistance of levels of factors once established seems to be so
> robust that I suspect its a feature. As far as I remember no one
> compalained about this properties so far. Am I missing something obvious?
> Are there any suggestions for workarounds?

It's definitely a feature. What methods crash? (I hope you mean gave an
error, not crashed R.)

The levels of a factor are the set of possible values, not the set of
achieved values.  Methods should cope with that (possibly with warnings).


The best way to drop levels, BTW, is

problem.factor <- problem.factor[,drop=TRUE]

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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