[R] Using image function to plot character values

[Jim Lemon]

Eric Bell wrote:
> Hello. I am a newbie to R. If I should be reading some FAQ or manual
> that could help answer my question please tell me and I will go there.
> 
> Problem: 
> 
> I have a spreadsheet that contains a character code in each cell. The
> columns in the spreadsheet represent time and the rows represent people.
> I want to use the image function to display this information, but the
> image function requires numeric data. I know how to read in the
> spreadsheet into a data frame, but if I use data.matrix to convert data
> frame into a numeric matrix, each column gets converted separately, so
> that the same character code may get converted to a different numeric
> code depending on the column. How do I apply the character to numeric
> conversion so that each character gets converted to the same numeric
> value?
> 
> A secondary problem is that after I do the conversion, I need to know
> what codes were converted to what numeric values.
> 
Hi Eric,
Using your example data frame,

matrix(as.numeric(unlist(dv)),nrow=dim(dv)[1])

gives you the matrix you want, and

levels(unlist(dv))
unique(as.numeric(unlist(dv)))

gives you the correspondence between character codes and numbers.

Jim