r looping through dataframe to change to factors

Asked Apr 12 '18 at 23:47

Active Apr 12 '18 at 23:47

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I have a dataframe called my_data. I have 47 columns. I want to loop through all columns starting on the third column. I then want to change each of these columns to a factor using the original column header.

I am fairly new to coding in R, and I appreciate the help! I am unsure of the correct syntax but here is my code;

  for(i in names(my_data)){
  my_data$[i] <- factor(my_data$[i])
  is.factor(my_data$[i])
}

asked Apr 12 '18 at 23:47

Dustin Smith

No need for loops here. – neilfws Apr 12 '18 at 23:55
df[,3:ncol(df)] = data.frame(apply(df[,3:ncol(df)], 2, as.factor)) would be a base R solution that only coerces columns starting from the 3rd, instead of all columns – spinodal Apr 12 '18 at 23:59
@spinodal Thank you! – Dustin Smith Apr 13 '18 at 00:04
I like the `dplyr::mutate_at` way too: `my_data %>% mutate_at(3:ncol(.), as.factor)` – neilfws Apr 13 '18 at 00:23

r looping through dataframe to change to factors

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