[R] Factor to numeric

Don MacQueen macq at llnl.gov
Thu Apr 24 18:21:42 CEST 2008


If you have a variable that is supposed to be numeric, but R thinks 
it is a factor, then you may (probably) have something in your input 
that is not a number. You changed the commas to decimal points at 
Prof. Ripley's suggestion. You still have the same error message. 
Therefore, you probably still have something in your input that is 
not a number.

try:
   unique(ekob$PAP)
and see what you get

Assuming you created this dataframe using read.table() (or 
read.delim(), etc.), I'd suggest you read the documentation for that 
function very carefully, and inspect your input data for non-numeric 
strings where there should be a numeric string.

It would be helpful if you show what you tried, and the error 
message, from *after* you changed to decimal points.

-Don

At 5:31 PM +0200 4/24/08, Jojje Andersson wrote:
>Hello!
>
>Thanks!
>
>I changed the "," to "." in both datafile and code but the problem 
>remains identical.
>Cheers!
>Jojje
>
>
>
>
>>  Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:16:38 +0100> From: 
>>ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> To: dietaamigo at hotmail.com> CC: 
>>r-help at r-project.org> Subject: Re: [R] Factor to numeric> > The 
>>decimal point in R is always '.', never ','.> > On Thu, 24 Apr 
>>2008, Jojje Andersson wrote:> > >> > Hello!> > I have a problem 
>>whith a data.frame. I want to make a subset where some of the 
>>variables have values within ceartain limits.> > The variables are 
>>proportions like 1,00, 0,54, 0,00 etc.> > I don't get it right as R 
>>take the variables for factors.> >> >> >> ekobsub1 <- subset(ekob, 
>>PAP>0,25 & PAP<0,6 & CAP>0,1 & CAP<0,6 & FAP>0,1)> > Error in 
>>`[.data.frame`(x, r, vars, drop = drop) : object "CAP" not found> > 
>>In addition: Warning message:> > In Ops.factor(PAP, 0) : > not 
>>meaningful for factors> >> >> 
>>ekobn<-as.numeric(as.character(ekob[["PAP"]]))> > Warning 
>>message:> > NAs introduced by coercion> >> >> > Thanks!> >> > 
>>/Jojje> >> > 
>>_________________________________________________________________> > 
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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
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-- 
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
925-423-1062



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