data-types

Common errors emerge from mix matched data types but the error ouput rarely tell you this-if ever.

In the console, when you print a data frame it will give you the data type of each column displayed. This is helpful because it gives you a hint. I could not figure out a way to display a data frame with the the column types below but can display the output of the str function on the mtcars data set

str(mtcars)

'data.frame':   32 obs. of  11 variables:
 $ mpg : num  21 21 22.8 21.4 18.7 18.1 14.3 24.4 22.8 19.2 ...
 $ cyl : num  6 6 4 6 8 6 8 4 4 6 ...
 $ disp: num  160 160 108 258 360 ...
 $ hp  : num  110 110 93 110 175 105 245 62 95 123 ...
 $ drat: num  3.9 3.9 3.85 3.08 3.15 2.76 3.21 3.69 3.92 3.92 ...
 $ wt  : num  2.62 2.88 2.32 3.21 3.44 ...
 $ qsec: num  16.5 17 18.6 19.4 17 ...
 $ vs  : num  0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 ...
 $ am  : num  1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
 $ gear: num  4 4 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 ...
 $ carb: num  4 4 1 1 2 1 4 2 2 4 ...

Yesterday I was working with the infer package and I was working through the examples and applying the examples to my own dataset. I could not figure out why the specify function would not work.

I needed a factor variable and I had a factor variable but not the right type of factor variable.

I had the data type <ord>and it was not working. The <ord> data type is an ordered factor.

It did not work to simply convert from an <ord> to a regular factor.

questions <- questions %>%
  dplyr::mutate(last_year = as.factor(last_year))%>%

It stayed the same <ord>

However this worked– I converted the variable to a character type and then convert it to a regular factor!

questions <- questions %>%
  dplyr::mutate(last_year = as.character.factor(last_year))%>%
  dplyr::mutate(last_year = as.factor(last_year)) %>%

I will have update this post with some updated data.