R Convert Categorical Data Frame Column to Numeric / Integer (Example Code)

In this R tutorial you’ll learn how to convert a categorical variable to numeric.

Example Data

data(iris)                                       # Load example data
head(iris)
#   Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
# 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 2          4.9         3.0          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2  setosa
# 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2  setosa
# 5          5.0         3.6          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4  setosa

Example: Convert Categorical Variable of Data Frame to Integer Using unclass() Function

iris_new <- iris                                 # Duplicate iris data set
iris_new$Species <- unclass(iris_new$Species)    # Apply unclass function to Species column
head(iris_new)                                   # Head of new iris data set
#   Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
# 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2       1
# 2          4.9         3.0          1.4         0.2       1
# 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2       1
# 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2       1
# 5          5.0         3.6          1.4         0.2       1
# 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4       1

Related Tutorials

Please find some related R programming tutorials below:

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