[R] Assigning categorical values to dates

[Tom Woolman]

Not if you use as.factor to convert a character type column to factor  
levels. It should recode the distinct string values to factors  
automatically for you.

i.e.,

df$datefactors <- as.factor(df$datestrings)



Quoting "N. F. Parsons" <nathan.f.parsons using gmail.com>:

> I am not averse to a factor-based solution, but I would still have  
> to manually enter that factor each month, correct? If possible, I’d  
> just like to point R at that column and have it do the work.
>
> —
> Nathan Parsons, B.SC, M.Sc, G.C.
>
> Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Sociology, Portland State University
> Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Washington State University
> Graduate Advocate, American Association of University Professors (OR)
>
> Recent work  
> (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nathan_Parsons3/publications)
> Schedule an appointment (https://calendly.com/nate-parsons)
>
>> On Wednesday, Jul 21, 2021 at 8:30 PM, Tom Woolman  
>> <twoolman using ontargettek.com (mailto:twoolman using ontargettek.com)> wrote:
>>
>> Couldn't you convert the date columns to character type data in a data
>> frame, and then convert those strings to factors in a 2nd step?
>>
>> The only downside I think to treating dates as factor levels is that
>> you might have an awful lot of factors if you have a large enough
>> dataset.
>>
>>
>>
>> Quoting "N. F. Parsons" <nathan.f.parsons using gmail.com>:
>>
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > If I have a tibble as follows:
>> >
>> > tibble(dates = c(rep("2021-07-04", 2), rep("2021-07-25", 3),
>> > rep("2021-07-18", 4)))
>> >
>> > how in the world do I add a column that evaluates each of those dates and
>> > assigns it a categorical value such that
>> >
>> > dates cycle
>> > <chr> <chr>
>> > 2021-07-04 1
>> > 2021-07-04 1
>> > 2021-07-25 3
>> > 2021-07-25 3
>> > 2021-07-25 3
>> > 2021-07-18 2
>> > 2021-07-18 2
>> > 2021-07-18 2
>> > 2021-07-18 2
>> >
>> > Not to further complicate matters, but some months I may only have one
>> > date, and some months I will have 4 dates - so thats not a fixed quantity.
>> > We've literally been doing this by hand at my job and I'd like to automate
>> > it.
>> >
>> > Thanks in advance!
>> >
>> > Nate Parsons
>> >
>> > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> >
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