Change All Columns from Factor to Numeric in R

Change all columns from factor to numeric in R

This works but I'm thinking your data has an odd character or space, something that makes it read in as factor. You can try reading in with the argument stringsAsFactors = FALSE. But still wouldn't address character vs numeric read in. Here's a fix:

data[] <- lapply(data, function(x) as.numeric(as.character(x)))

## > str(data)
## 'data.frame':   8 obs. of  4 variables:
##  $ v1: num  22.39 43.72 58.54 56.88 1.66 ...
##  $ v2: num  144.4 72.3 119.4 112.4 35.8 ...
##  $ v3: num  7 4 7 10 18 5 10 13
##  $ v4: num  5 0 3 4 18 3 4 7

How to convert data.frame column from Factor to numeric

breast$class <- as.numeric(as.character(breast$class))

If you have many columns to convert to numeric

indx <- sapply(breast, is.factor)
breast[indx] <- lapply(breast[indx], function(x) as.numeric(as.character(x)))

Another option is to use stringsAsFactors=FALSE while reading the file using read.table or read.csv

Just in case, other options to create/change columns

 breast[,'class'] <- as.numeric(as.character(breast[,'class']))

or

 breast <- transform(breast, class=as.numeric(as.character(breast)))

R change all columns of type factor to numeric

Applying the wisdom from Carl Witthoft above:

asNumeric <- function(x) as.numeric(as.character(x))
factorsNumeric <- function(d) modifyList(d, lapply(d[, sapply(d, is.factor)],   
                                                   asNumeric))

Example:

d <- data.frame(x=factor(1:3), y=factor(2:4), z=factor(3:5),
                r=c("a", "b", "c"), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
> f <- factorsNumeric(d)
> class(f$x)
[1] "numeric"
> class(f$r)
[1] "character"

Change the class from factor to numeric of many columns in a data frame

Further to Ramnath's answer, the behaviour you are experiencing is that due to as.numeric(x) returning the internal, numeric representation of the factor x at the R level. If you want to preserve the numbers that are the levels of the factor (rather than their internal representation), you need to convert to character via as.character() first as per Ramnath's example.

Your for loop is just as reasonable as an apply call and might be slightly more readable as to what the intention of the code is. Just change this line:

stats[,i] <- as.numeric(stats[,i])

to read

stats[,i] <- as.numeric(as.character(stats[,i]))

This is FAQ 7.10 in the R FAQ.

HTH

Convert multiple columns from factor to numeric but obtaining NAs in R

as.character/as.numeric expects a vector as input. With df[, cols] you are passing a dataframe to it (check class(df[, cols])).

If you are talking about the accepted answer in the link it says to change the code in for loop and doesn't suggest to pass entire dataframe. To change class of multiple columns you can use for loop, apply or lapply.

df[cols] <- lapply(df[cols], function(x) as.numeric(as.character(x)))

converting multiple columns from character to numeric format in r

You could try

DF <- data.frame("a" = as.character(0:5),
                 "b" = paste(0:5, ".1", sep = ""),
                 "c" = letters[1:6],
                 stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

# Check columns classes
sapply(DF, class)

#           a           b           c 
# "character" "character" "character" 

cols.num <- c("a","b")
DF[cols.num] <- sapply(DF[cols.num],as.numeric)
sapply(DF, class)

#          a           b           c 
#  "numeric"   "numeric" "character"

Coerce multiple columns to factors at once

Choose some columns to coerce to factors:

cols <- c("A", "C", "D", "H")

Use lapply() to coerce and replace the chosen columns:

data[cols] <- lapply(data[cols], factor)  ## as.factor() could also be used

Check the result:

sapply(data, class)
#        A         B         C         D         E         F         G 
# "factor" "integer"  "factor"  "factor" "integer" "integer" "integer" 
#        H         I         J 
# "factor" "integer" "integer" 

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