How to replace words in a dichotomous column for an R data frame with numbers?
A dichotomous column can be represented by words such as Yes/No, Good/Bad, Right/Wrong etc. To replace such words with number, say 1 and 0 we can use ifelse function.
For example, if we have a data frame called df that contains a column Binary with Yes and No values then we can replace Yes with 1 and No with 0 by using the below command −
df$Binary<-ifelse(df$Binary=="Yes",1,0)
Example 1
Following snippet creates a sample data frame −
x<-sample(c("Yes","No"),20,replace=TRUE)
df1<-data.frame(x)
df1The following dataframe is created −
x
1 Yes
2 Yes
3 Yes
4 Yes
5 No
6 Yes
7 Yes
8 Yes
9 Yes
10 Yes
11 Yes
12 No
13 Yes
14 No
15 No
16 Yes
17 No
18 Yes
19 Yes
20 Yes
To replace words Yes with 1 and No with 0, add the following code to the above snippet −
x<-sample(c("Yes","No"),20,replace=TRUE)
df1<-data.frame(x)
df1$x<-ifelse(df1$x=="Yes",1,0)
df1Output
If you execute all the above given snippets as a single program, it generates the following output −
x
1 1
2 1
3 1
4 1
5 0
6 1
7 1
8 1
9 1
10 1
11 1
12 0
13 1
14 0
15 0
16 1
17 0
18 1
19 1
20 1
Example 2
Following snippet creates a sample data frame −
y<-sample(c("Good","Bad"),20,replace=TRUE)
df2<-data.frame(y)
df2The following dataframe is created −
y
1 Bad
2 Bad
3 Bad
4 Good
5 Good
6 Good
7 Good
8 Bad
9 Bad
10 Bad
11 Bad
12 Bad
13 Good
14 Bad
15 Good
16 Good
17 Good
18 Bad
19 Good
20 Good
To replace words Good with 1 and Bad with 0, add the following code to the above snippet −
y<-sample(c("Good","Bad"),20,replace=TRUE)
df2<-data.frame(y)
df2$y<-ifelse(df2$y=="Good",1,0)
df2Output
If you execute all the above given snippets as a single program, it generates the following output −
y
1 0
2 0
3 0
4 1
5 1
6 1
7 1
8 0
9 0
10 0
11 0
12 0
13 1
14 0
15 1
16 1
17 1
18 0
19 1
20 1
Published on 09-Nov-2021 07:10:31
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