[R] help with as.numeric

[Nutter, Benjamin]

as.numeric() doesn't convert factors to the explicit value, nor should
it.  Under what you're expecting, ff you have a factor where the levels
are "Female" and "Male", using as.numeric() wouldn't produce anything
meaningful.

However, as.numeric() does something much smarter.  It converts "Female"
to 1, and "Male" to 2.  More generally, if you have n levels, it will
produce a vector of values between 1 and n.  This is referred to as the
'internal coding.'

If you want to convert your height and bmi variables to their numeric
values, you need to do

> as.numeric(as.character(height))

This will get you around the internal coding.

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of deanj2k
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 7:58 AM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] help with as.numeric


hi everyone, wondering if you could help me with a novice problem.  I
have a
data frame called subjects with a height and weight variable and want to
calculate a bmi variable from the two.  i have tried:

attach(subjects)
bmi <- (weight)/((height/100)^2)

but it comes up with the error:
Warning messages:
1: In Ops.factor(height, 100) : / not meaningful for factors
2: In Ops.factor((weight), ((height/100)^2)) :
  / not meaningful for factors

I presume that this means the vectors height and weight are not in
numeric
form (confirmed by is.numeric) so i changed the code to:

bmi <- (as.numeric(weight))/((as.numeric(height)/100)^2)

but this just comes up with a result which doesnt make sense i.e.
numbers
such as 40000 within bmi vector.  Ive looked at
as.numeric(height)/as.numeric(weight) and these numbers just arnt the
same
as height/weight which is the reason for the incorrect bmi.  Cant anyone
tell me where I am going wrong?  Its quiet frustrating because I cant
understand why a function claiming to convert to numeric would come up
with
such a bizarre result.
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