R for Data Science总结之——Factors

R for Data Science总结之——Factors

factor类型在R中用于处理分类变量，这里我们使用forcats包，也就是for categorical variables：

library(tidyverse)
library(forcats)

定义factor：

x1 <- c("Dec", "Apr", "Jan", "Mar")

month_levels <- c(
  "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", 
  "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"
)

y1 <- factor(x1, levels = month_levels)
y1
#> [1] Dec Apr Jan Mar
#> Levels: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
sort(y1)
#> [1] Jan Mar Apr Dec
#> Levels: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

如果levels中没有的变量会自动转化为NA：

y2 <- factor(x2, levels = month_levels)
y2
#> [1] Dec  Apr  <NA> Mar 
#> Levels: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

如果想得到一个warning信息，可以使用readr::parse_factor()：

y2 <- parse_factor(x2, levels = month_levels)
#> Warning: 1 parsing failure.
#> row # A tibble: 1 x 4 col     row   col expected           actual expected   <int> <int> <chr>              <chr>  actual 1     3    NA value in level set Jam

如果省略levels，那么数据会按字母顺序排列：

factor(x1)
#> [1] Dec Apr Jan Mar
#> Levels: Apr Dec Jan Mar

如果想让levels顺序符合数据中第一次出现的顺序可以使用unique()或在定义后进行fct_inorder()：

f1 <- factor(x1, levels = unique(x1))
f1
#> [1] Dec Apr Jan Mar
#> Levels: Dec Apr Jan Mar

f2 <- x1 %>% factor() %>% fct_inorder()
f2
#> [1] Dec Apr Jan Mar
#> Levels: Dec Apr Jan Mar

想直接获得levels可用：

levels(f2)
#> [1] "Dec" "Apr" "Jan" "Mar"

现在拿gss_cat数据集做实验：