when i use as.numeric all my latitude and longitude become to "1"

Question

[enter image description here][1]
$ latitude : Factor w/ 2 levels "43.0678901152949",..: 1 1 1
$ longitude: Factor w/ 2 levels "-76.1734713936105",..: 1 1 1    
current data type is factor, but I want to change them to Numeric, so I use 
no3$latitude <- as.numeric(no3$latitude)
no3$longitude <- as.numeric(no3$longitude)

1.I use "as.numeric" in r, to change the data type, but it doesn't work

it becomes to
[enter image description here][2]
$ latitude : num  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
$ longitude: num  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HMj9C.png
[2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/egcsx.png

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 01 '18 at 20:57

2

Sometimes introducing as.character() in a class coercion chain seems to rectify such problems. I think the reason why your code exhibits this behaviour is because under the hood (mode-wise), factor vectors are numeric vectors that go from 1 to n where n is the number of levels.

> x <- as.factor("43.0678901152949")
> as.numeric(x)
[1] 1

> x <- as.character(as.factor("43.0678901152949"))
> as.numeric(x)
[1] 43.06789

answered Dec 01 '18 at 20:57

12b345b6b78

995
5
16

Thank you for your help, but one more thing. I want to keep record all the digits after the "." not just five digits. how should I do that? – Xichen Yao Dec 01 '18 at 22:14
`options(digits=15)` See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29880210/as-numeric-removes-decimal-places-in-r-how-to-change – 12b345b6b78 Dec 01 '18 at 22:55
Thank you very much – Xichen Yao Dec 02 '18 at 21:07

when i use as.numeric all my latitude and longitude become to "1"

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