Changing the column type from numeric to factor - R

Question

I am working with the "mtcars" dataset, below are few rows from it:

                   mpg cyl disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
Mazda RX4         21.0   6  160 110 3.90 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
Mazda RX4 Wag     21.0   6  160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4
Datsun 710        22.8   4  108  93 3.85 2.320 18.61  1  1    4    1
Hornet 4 Drive    21.4   6  258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44  1  0    3    1
Hornet Sportabout 18.7   8  360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02  0  0    3    2
Valiant           18.1   6  225 105 2.76 3.460 20.22  1  0    3    1

The 'cyl' and 'gear' columns from this dataset are of numeric type, i want to change their class to factor, how can i do it?

Answer 1

You can use the as.factor() function for this purpose:

as.factor(mtcars$cyl)->mtcars$cyl

I am converting the type of 'cyl' from numeric to factor and storing it back to 'cyl' column.

Similarly,

as.factor(mtcars1$gear)->mtcars1$gear