[R] How do I coerce numeric factor columns of data frame to vector?

[Michael A. Miller]

>>>>> "Murray" == Murray Jorgensen <maj at stats.waikato.ac.nz> writes:

    > I have just noticed that quite a few columns of a data
    > frame that I am working on are numeric factors. For
    > summary() purposes I want them to be vectors.

Do you want them to be vectors or do you want numeric values?  If
the later, try as.numeric instead of as.vector:

> as.vector(factor(rep(seq(4),3)))
 [1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "1" "2" "3" "4" "1" "2" "3" "4"
> as.numeric(factor(rep(seq(4),3)))
 [1] 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
> summary(as.vector(factor(rep(seq(4),3))))
   Length     Class      Mode 
       12 character character 
> summary(as.numeric(factor(rep(seq(4),3))))
   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
   1.00    1.75    2.50    2.50    3.25    4.00 


Mike