Factors in R Programming Language: Definition and Examples

Factors are the data objects which are used to categorize the data and store it as levels. They can store both strings and integers. They are useful in the columns which have a limited number of unique values. Like "Male, "Female" and True, False etc. They are useful in data analysis for statistical modeling.

Factors are created using the factor () function by taking a vector as input.

Example

# Create a vector as input.
data <- c("East","West","East","North","North","East")

print(data)
print(is.factor(data))

# Apply the factor function.
factor_data <- factor(data)

print(factor_data)
print(is.factor(factor_data))

When we execute the above code, it produces the following result ?

[1] "East"  "West"  "East"  "North" "North" "East"
[1] FALSE
[1] East  West  East  North North East 
Levels: East North West
[1] TRUE

     [,1] [,2] [,3]

[1,]    3   -1    2
[2,]    9    4    6
     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]    5    0    3
[2,]    2    9    4
Result of multiplication 
     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]   15    0    6
[2,]   18   36   24
Result of division 
     [,1]      [,2]      [,3]
[1,]  0.6      -Inf 0.6666667
[2,]  4.5 0.4444444 1.5000000