R语言学习笔记（11）——因子

创建因子

因子是用于对数据进行分类并将其存储为级别的数据对象。 它们可以存储字符串和整数。 它们在具有有限数量的唯一值的列中很有用。 像“男性”，“女性”和True，False等。它们在统计建模的数据分析中很有用。
使用factor()函数通过将向量作为输入创建因子。
示例；
输入：

# Create a vector as input.
data <- c("East","West","East","North","North","East","West","West","West","East","North")

print(data)
print(is.factor(data))

# Apply the factor function.
factor_data <- factor(data)

print(factor_data)
print(is.factor(factor_data))

输出：

 [1] "East"  "West"  "East"  "North" "North" "East"  "West"  "West"  "West"  "East" "North"
[1] FALSE
 [1] East  West  East  North North East  West  West  West  East  North
Levels: East North West
[1] TRUE

数据帧的因子

在创建具有文本数据列的任何数据帧时，R语言将文本列视为分类数据并在其上创建因子。
示例：
输入：

# Create the vectors for data frame.
height <- c(132,151,162,139,166,147,122)
weight <- c(48,49,66,53,67,52,40)
gender <- c("male","male","female","female","male","female","male")

# Create the data frame.
input_data <- data.frame(height,weight,gender)
print(input_data)

# Test if the gender column is a factor.
print(is.factor(input_data$gender))

# Print the gender column so see the levels.
print(input_data$gender)

输出（示例给出的）：

 height weight gender
1    132     48   male
2    151     49   male
3    162     66 female
4    139     53 female
5    166     67   male
6    147     52 female
7    122     40   male
[1] TRUE
[1] male   male   female female male   female male  
Levels: female male

输出（运行代码所得）：

  height weight gender
1    132     48   male
2    151     49   male
3    162     66 female
4    139     53 female
5    166     67   male
6    147     52 female
7    122     40   male
[1] FALSE
[1] "male"   "male"   "female" "female" "male"   "female" "male" 

两个输出不同，原因在于：
我所使用的R版本为R 4.2.2 ，应该是与给出示例所使用的版本不同，而在R 4.2.2 中，创建数据帧时，参数 stringsAsFactors 默认为FALSE ，示例所使用的版本中的参数 stringsAsFactors 应该是默认为TRUE。

更改级别顺序

可以通过使用新的等级次序再次应用因子函数来改变因子中的等级的顺序。
示例：
输入：

data <- c("East","West","East","North","North","East","West","West","West","East","North")
# Create the factors
factor_data <- factor(data)
print(factor_data)

# Apply the factor function with required order of the level.
new_order_data <- factor(factor_data,levels = c("East","West","North"))
print(new_order_data)

输出：

 [1] East  West  East  North North East  West  West  West  East  North
Levels: East North West
 [1] East  West  East  North North East  West  West  West  East  North
Levels: East West North

生成因子级别

使用gl()函数生成因子级别。 它需要两个整数作为输入，指示每个级别有多少级别和多少次。

gl(n, k, labels)

n：给出级数的整数
k：给出复制数目的整数
labels：所得因子水平的标签向量
示例：
输入：

v <- gl(3, 4, labels = c("Tampa", "Seattle","Boston"))
print(v)

输出：

 [1] Tampa   Tampa   Tampa   Tampa   Seattle Seattle Seattle Seattle Boston  Boston  Boston  Boston 
Levels: Tampa Seattle Boston