[R] How to change the class of data?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Birgitle wrote:

>
> I have an additional question concerning to this topic.
>
> I usually use something liek that:
>
> read.table(****,  colClasses=c("numeric", "factor", "character",
> "my.funny.class"))
>
> but why can I not implement "ordered.factor" in there?

Because the help page says

colClasses: character.  A vector of classes to be assumed for the
           columns.  Recycled as necessary, or if the character vector
           is named, unspecified values are taken to be 'NA'.

           Possible values are 'NA' (when 'type.convert' is used),
           '"NULL"' (when the column is skipped), one of the atomic
           vector classes (logical, integer, numeric, complex,
           character, raw), or '"factor"', '"Date"' or '"POSIXct"'.
           Otherwise there needs to be an 'as' method (from package
           'methods') for conversion from '"character"' to the specified
           formal class.

There is no as.ordered.factor() nor as() method, and nothing in the data 
can specify the order of the levels unambiguously.  So unless one accepts 
a guess (and in R we try not to do that for you, as in e.g. as.Date with 
numbers), there is no possibility to support ordered factors.

>
> Birgit
>
>
> Kenn Konstabel wrote:
>>
>> Conversion to factor may happen (and often does) when you read in data
>> with
>> read.table(). So one solution may be reading in the same data again in a
>> slightly different way:
>>
>> read.table(file="mydatafile", as.is=TRUE)
>> # see also ?read.table
>>
>> You can also specify a class to each column of the data you're about to
>> read
>> in:
>> read.table(****,  colClasses=c("numeric", "factor", "character",
>> "my.funny.class"))
>>
>>
>> Ad take a look at   http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html    p.
>> 7.10
>> for the right answer -- in any case, don't use as.numeric(x)!
>>
>> Kenn
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 9:24 AM, Qman Fin <finosaur at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have some data x, which are actualy consisted of numerical enties. But
>>> the
>>> class of this matrix is set to be "factor" by someone else. I used
>>> "class(x)", it turns out to be "factor". So I can not calculate them.
>>>
>>> How can I turn them into numerical data so that I can apply math
>>> operations
>>> on them? Thanks a lot for your help.
>>>
>>> Selina
>>>
>>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> 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.
>>
>>
>
>
> -----
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>
> ______________________________________________
> 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
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>

-- 
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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595