You have been told how to do it. If you do not understand, you should find a suitable tutorial to learn about how R factors work. There are some difficulties in converting dates on an ongoing basis to factors, so I think you should take Tom's advice to rethink this. It sounds as if you might also do well to find someone with more R experience to consult with... "How in the world do I..." does not inspire confidence that you know what you are doing.
Cheers, Bert On Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:47 PM N. F. Parsons <nathan.f.pars...@gmail.com> wrote: > I am not averse to a factor-based solution, but I would still have to > manually enter that factor each month, correct? If possible, I’d just like > to point R at that column and have it do the work. > > — > Nathan Parsons, B.SC, M.Sc, G.C. > > Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Sociology, Portland State University > Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Washington State University > Graduate Advocate, American Association of University Professors (OR) > > Recent work ( > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nathan_Parsons3/publications) > Schedule an appointment (https://calendly.com/nate-parsons) > > > On Wednesday, Jul 21, 2021 at 8:30 PM, Tom Woolman < > twool...@ontargettek.com (mailto:twool...@ontargettek.com)> wrote: > > > > Couldn't you convert the date columns to character type data in a data > > frame, and then convert those strings to factors in a 2nd step? > > > > The only downside I think to treating dates as factor levels is that > > you might have an awful lot of factors if you have a large enough > > dataset. > > > > > > > > Quoting "N. F. Parsons" <nathan.f.pars...@gmail.com>: > > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > If I have a tibble as follows: > > > > > > tibble(dates = c(rep("2021-07-04", 2), rep("2021-07-25", 3), > > > rep("2021-07-18", 4))) > > > > > > how in the world do I add a column that evaluates each of those dates > and > > > assigns it a categorical value such that > > > > > > dates cycle > > > <chr> <chr> > > > 2021-07-04 1 > > > 2021-07-04 1 > > > 2021-07-25 3 > > > 2021-07-25 3 > > > 2021-07-25 3 > > > 2021-07-18 2 > > > 2021-07-18 2 > > > 2021-07-18 2 > > > 2021-07-18 2 > > > > > > Not to further complicate matters, but some months I may only have one > > > date, and some months I will have 4 dates - so thats not a fixed > quantity. > > > We've literally been doing this by hand at my job and I'd like to > automate > > > it. > > > > > > Thanks in advance! > > > > > > Nate Parsons > > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > > > ______________________________________________ > > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > > > 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. > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > > 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. > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.