Dear Chris, I hesitate to answer a question arising from an exam -- you should probably address the question to the person who set the exam -- but it doesn't hurt, I think, to point out the following: The recode function that you're using is in the car package, which is associated with a book (see ?car) that has several examples of the use of the function.
Regards, John -------------------------------- John Fox Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario Canada L8S 4M4 905-525-9140x23604 http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox -------------------------------- > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Linton > Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 4:16 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [R] Help with "recode" and "factor" functions > > I have a data set with seven inputs. Four of which are > categorical. For my midterm, my professor wants us to scale > all the inputs. This means, I pressume, that I have to use > 'recode' or 'factor' to transform the categorical data in > numerical. For example, one input variable is > 'race=(b,w,h,o)'. I just want to assign a numerical value to > all 'b,w,h,o'. I thought 'recode' should do this, but it > doesn't work. Here's the code I'm using for recode: > > recode(race, "b='1';w='2';h='3';o='4'") > > this is the error I get: > Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos) : object "o" not found > > > It's not that there's no "o". If I change the order or > combination of the variables, it always can't find one of them. > > I could also use 'factor', from what I hear. But, I looked > at the help section on this function and I ended up more confused. > > > How do I code it so these variables take on numerial values? > I need to be able to use: > > race.centered = race - mean(race) > > > This scaling code doesn't really make sense if the values of > 'race' are non-numerical. I might end up dividing by 2 SD's > as well. But, I don't know if I need to. I'll have to do > some more reading. > > > Thank you for your help! > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > [email protected] 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. ______________________________________________ [email protected] 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.
