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You're reading from  R for Data Science Cookbook (n)

Product typeBook
Published inJul 2016
Reading LevelIntermediate
Publisher
ISBN-139781784390815
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu)
Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu)
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Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu)

Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu) is the founder of LargitData (www.LargitData.com), a startup company that mainly focuses on providing big data and machine learning products. He has previously worked for Trend Micro as a software engineer, where he was responsible for building big data platforms for business intelligence and customer relationship management systems. In addition to being a start-up entrepreneur and data scientist, he specializes in using Spark and Hadoop to process big data and apply data mining techniques for data analysis. Yu-Wei is also a professional lecturer and has delivered lectures on big data and machine learning in R and Python, and given tech talks at a variety of conferences. In 2015, Yu-Wei wrote Machine Learning with R Cookbook, Packt Publishing. In 2013, Yu-Wei reviewed Bioinformatics with R Cookbook, Packt Publishing. For more information, please visit his personal website at www.ywchiu.com. **********************************Acknowledgement************************************** I have immense gratitude for my family and friends for supporting and encouraging me to complete this book. I would like to sincerely thank my mother, Ming-Yang Huang (Miranda Huang); my mentor, Man-Kwan Shan; the proofreader of this book, Brendan Fisher; Members of LargitData; Data Science Program (DSP); and other friends who have offered their support.
Read more about Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu)

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Converting data types


If we do not specify a data type during the import phase, R will automatically assign a type to the imported dataset. However, if the data type assigned is different to the actual type, we may face difficulties in further data manipulation. Thus, data type conversion is an essential step during the preprocessing phase.

Getting ready

Complete the previous recipe and import both employees.csv and salaries.csv into an R session. You must also specify column names for these two datasets to be able to perform the following steps.

How to do it…

Perform the following steps to convert the data type:

  1. First, examine the data type of each attribute using the class function:

    > class(employees$birth_date)
    [1] "factor"
    
  2. You can also examine types of all attributes using the str function:

    > str(employees)
    
    'data.frame': 10 obs. of  6 variables:
     $ emp_no    : int  10001 10002 10003 10004 10005 10006 10007 10008 10009 10010
     $ birth_date: Factor w/ 10 levels "1952-04-19","1953-04-20...
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R for Data Science Cookbook (n)
Published in: Jul 2016Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781784390815

Author (1)

author image
Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu)

Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu) is the founder of LargitData (www.LargitData.com), a startup company that mainly focuses on providing big data and machine learning products. He has previously worked for Trend Micro as a software engineer, where he was responsible for building big data platforms for business intelligence and customer relationship management systems. In addition to being a start-up entrepreneur and data scientist, he specializes in using Spark and Hadoop to process big data and apply data mining techniques for data analysis. Yu-Wei is also a professional lecturer and has delivered lectures on big data and machine learning in R and Python, and given tech talks at a variety of conferences. In 2015, Yu-Wei wrote Machine Learning with R Cookbook, Packt Publishing. In 2013, Yu-Wei reviewed Bioinformatics with R Cookbook, Packt Publishing. For more information, please visit his personal website at www.ywchiu.com. **********************************Acknowledgement************************************** I have immense gratitude for my family and friends for supporting and encouraging me to complete this book. I would like to sincerely thank my mother, Ming-Yang Huang (Miranda Huang); my mentor, Man-Kwan Shan; the proofreader of this book, Brendan Fisher; Members of LargitData; Data Science Program (DSP); and other friends who have offered their support.
Read more about Yu-Wei, Chiu (David Chiu)