Hi all, If we, the R community, are endeavoring to make R user friendly (gasp!), I think that one of the first places to start would be in setting stringsAsFactors = FALSE. Several times I've run into instances of folks decrying R's "rediculous usage of memory" in reading data, only to come to find out that these folks were unknowingly importing certain columns as factors. The fix is easy once you know it, but it isn't obvious to new users, and I'd bet that it turns some % of people off of the program. Factors are not used often enough to justify this default behavior in my opinion. When factors are used, the user knows to treat the variable as a factor, and so it can be done on a case-by-case (or should I say variable-by-variable?) basis.
Is this a default that should be changed? Matt On 8/13/07, John Kane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is one of R's rather _endearing_ little > idiosyncrasies. I ran into it a while ago. > http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/98090.html > > > For some reason, possibly historical, the option > "stringAsFactors" is set to TRUE. > > As Prof Ripley says FAQ 7.10 will tell you > as.numeric(as.character(f)) # for a one-off conversion > > >From Gabor Grothendieck A one-off solution for a > complete data.frame > > DF <- data.frame(let = letters[1:3], num = 1:3, > stringsAsFactors = FALSE) > > str(DF) # to see what has happened. > > You can reset the option globally, see below. However > you might want to read Gabor Grothendieck's comment > about this in the thread referenced above since it > could cause problems if you transfer files alot. > > Personally I went with the global option since I don't > tend to transfer programs to other people and I was > getting tired of tracking down errors in my programs > caused by numeric and character variables suddenly > deciding to become factors. > > >From Steven Tucker: > > You can also this option globally with > options(stringsAsFactors = TRUE) # in > \library\base\R\Rprofile > > --- Falk Lieder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > I have imported a data file to R. Unfortunately R > > has interpreted some > > numeric variables as factors. Therefore I want to > > reconvert these to numeric > > vectors whose values are the factor levels' labels. > > I tried > > as.numeric(<factor>), > > but it returns a vector of factor levels (i.e. > > 1,2,3,...) instead of labels > > (i.e. 0.71, 1.34, 2.61,…). > > What can I do instead? > > > > Best wishes, Falk > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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. > -- Matthew C Keller Postdoctoral Fellow Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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.