[R] Opinion: Why I find factors convenient to use

[Steve Lianoglou]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Jeff Newmiller
<jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
> I don't know if my recent post on this prompted your post, but I don't see much to argue with in your discussion. I find factors to be useful for managing display and some kinds of analysis.
>
> However, I find them mostly a handicap when importing, merging, and handling data QC. Therefore I delay conversion until late in the game... but usually I do eventually convert in most cases.

Agreed here -- I actually haven't been tuned into any such recent
conversation (if there was one), but if I were a gambling man, I'd bet
that the majority of the problems people have with factors can
probably be boiled down to the fact that the default value for
stringsAsFactors is TRUE.

I like factors -- that said, I am annoyed by them at times, but I
still like them.

Also, Bert mentioned that he thinks they save space over characters --
I believe that this is no longer true, but I'm not certain.

-steve

-- 
Steve Lianoglou
Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
 | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
 | Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact