The “factor” Function in R

• Package: Base R (no specific package required)

• Purpose: Converts a vector into a factor, which represents categorical data.

• General Class: Data Transformation

• Required Argument(s):

• x: A vector of data values.

• Notable Optional Arguments:

• levels: A character vector giving the levels (unique values) of the factor.

• labels: A character vector specifying labels for the levels.

• exclude: A logical value indicating whether levels should be excluded if they do not appear in the data.

• ordered: A logical value indicating whether the levels should be treated as ordered.

• Example:

• # Example data for using the factor function
  colors <- c("Red", "Blue", "Green", "Red", "Green", "Blue")
  
  # Convert the character vector into a factor
  color_factor <- factor(colors, levels = c("Red", "Blue", "Green"), ordered = TRUE)
  
  # Display the result
  print(color_factor)

• In this example, the factor function from base R is used to convert a character vector (colors) into a factor. The levels argument is used to specify the desired levels of the factor, and ordered is set to TRUE to create an ordered factor. The resulting object (color_factor) is a factor with specified levels and ordering.