[R] help with as.numeric
hi everyone, wondering if you could help me with a novice problem. I have a data frame called subjects with a height and weight variable and want to calculate a bmi variable from the two. i have tried: attach(subjects) bmi - (weight)/((height/100)^2) but it comes up with the error: Warning messages: 1: In Ops.factor(height, 100) : / not meaningful for factors 2: In Ops.factor((weight), ((height/100)^2)) : / not meaningful for factors I presume that this means the vectors height and weight are not in numeric form (confirmed by is.numeric) so i changed the code to: bmi - (as.numeric(weight))/((as.numeric(height)/100)^2) but this just comes up with a result which doesnt make sense i.e. numbers such as 4 within bmi vector. Ive looked at as.numeric(height)/as.numeric(weight) and these numbers just arnt the same as height/weight which is the reason for the incorrect bmi. Cant anyone tell me where I am going wrong? Its quiet frustrating because I cant understand why a function claiming to convert to numeric would come up with such a bizarre result. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/help-with-as.numeric-tp23558326p23558326.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] help with as.numeric
as.numeric() doesn't convert factors to the explicit value, nor should
it. Under what you're expecting, ff you have a factor where the levels
are Female and Male, using as.numeric() wouldn't produce anything
meaningful.
However, as.numeric() does something much smarter. It converts Female
to 1, and Male to 2. More generally, if you have n levels, it will
produce a vector of values between 1 and n. This is referred to as the
'internal coding.'
If you want to convert your height and bmi variables to their numeric
values, you need to do
as.numeric(as.character(height))
This will get you around the internal coding.
-Original Message-
From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org]
On Behalf Of deanj2k
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 7:58 AM
To: r-help@r-project.org
Subject: [R] help with as.numeric
hi everyone, wondering if you could help me with a novice problem. I
have a
data frame called subjects with a height and weight variable and want to
calculate a bmi variable from the two. i have tried:
attach(subjects)
bmi - (weight)/((height/100)^2)
but it comes up with the error:
Warning messages:
1: In Ops.factor(height, 100) : / not meaningful for factors
2: In Ops.factor((weight), ((height/100)^2)) :
/ not meaningful for factors
I presume that this means the vectors height and weight are not in
numeric
form (confirmed by is.numeric) so i changed the code to:
bmi - (as.numeric(weight))/((as.numeric(height)/100)^2)
but this just comes up with a result which doesnt make sense i.e.
numbers
such as 4 within bmi vector. Ive looked at
as.numeric(height)/as.numeric(weight) and these numbers just arnt the
same
as height/weight which is the reason for the incorrect bmi. Cant anyone
tell me where I am going wrong? Its quiet frustrating because I cant
understand why a function claiming to convert to numeric would come up
with
such a bizarre result.
--
View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/help-with-as.numeric-tp23558326p23558326.html
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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Re: [R] help with as.numeric
On May 15, 2009, at 6:57 AM, deanj2k wrote: hi everyone, wondering if you could help me with a novice problem. I have a data frame called subjects with a height and weight variable and want to calculate a bmi variable from the two. i have tried: attach(subjects) bmi - (weight)/((height/100)^2) but it comes up with the error: Warning messages: 1: In Ops.factor(height, 100) : / not meaningful for factors 2: In Ops.factor((weight), ((height/100)^2)) : / not meaningful for factors I presume that this means the vectors height and weight are not in numeric form (confirmed by is.numeric) so i changed the code to: bmi - (as.numeric(weight))/((as.numeric(height)/100)^2) but this just comes up with a result which doesnt make sense i.e. numbers such as 4 within bmi vector. Ive looked at as.numeric(height)/as.numeric(weight) and these numbers just arnt the same as height/weight which is the reason for the incorrect bmi. Cant anyone tell me where I am going wrong? Its quiet frustrating because I cant understand why a function claiming to convert to numeric would come up with such a bizarre result. That 'height' is a factor suggests that you imported the data using one of the read.table() family of functions and that there are non- numeric characters in at least one of the entries in that column. Since 'height' is a factor, if you use as.numeric(), you will get numeric values returned that are the factor level numeric codes and not the expected numeric values. That is why you are getting bad values for BMI. See: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-do-I-convert-factors-to-numeric_003f If you use something like: grep([^0-9\\.], height, value = TRUE) that should show you where you have non-numeric values in the 'height' column. That is, entries for 'height' that contain characters other than numeric or a decimal. Foe example: height - factor(c(seq(0, 1, 0.1), 1,10, letters[1:5])) height [1] 00.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 11,10 a bcde Levels: 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1,10 a b c d e as.numeric(height) [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 grep([^0-9\\.], height, value = TRUE) [1] 1,10 abcde I would also check the 'weight' column for the same reasons, to be sure that you don't have bad data there. Another approach would be to use: str(subjects) which will give you a sense of the data types for each column in your data frame. Review each column and take note of any columns that should be numeric, but are factors. See ?str, ?grep and ?regex for more information. You might also want to look at ?type.convert, which is the function used by the read.table() family of functions to determine the data types for each column during import. HTH, Marc Schwartz __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
