How would I convert categorical variables from a dataset to numeric?

Question

I am a beginner in R programming. In the dataset that I want to work, there are 3 categorical variables that I want to convert into (0's and 1's).

This is how I tried to do it, but it didn't change anything?

A = mydata$industry
A[which(A=="yes")] = 1
A[which(A=="no")] = 0

Thanks in advance for the help.

Do you mind giving us more information, for example a sample of your data? — bdempe, Dec 09 '20 at 00:18
Nothing is changing because you are not assigning the output to any variable, in addition to other issues with your code. — neilfws, Dec 09 '20 at 00:20
Try: `mydata$industry <- ifelse(mydata$industry=="yes", 1, 0)` — Vincent, Dec 09 '20 at 00:22
@Hylda Great! I put it in an answer in case you want to mark the problem so others see it as solved. — Vincent, Dec 09 '20 at 00:29
Just using `check <- A == 'yes'` will yield a boolean vector equivalent to 0/1. I.e. no `ifelse` required. — SteveM, Dec 09 '20 at 00:38

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 09 '20 at 00:29

1

Try this:

mydata$industry <- ifelse(mydata$industry=="yes", 1, 0)

answered Dec 09 '20 at 00:29

Vincent

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '20 at 00:24

0

Maybe you can try the code below with dummy data of A

A <- c("no", "yes", "no", "no", "yes")

such that

> as.integer(factor(A, labels = c("no", "yes"))) - 1
[1] 0 1 0 0 1

answered Dec 09 '20 at 00:24

ThomasIsCoding

2 Answers2