Importing csv file into R - numeric values read as characters
r
Solution
Whatever algebra you are doing in Excel to create the new column could probably be done more effectively in R.
Please try the following: Read the raw file (before any excel manipulation) into R using `read.csv(... stringsAsFactors=FALSE)`. [If that does not work, please take a look at `?read.table` (which `read.csv` wraps), however there may be some other underlying issue].
For example:
delim = "," # or is it "\t" ?
dec = "." # or is it "," ?
myDataFrame <- read.csv("path/to/file.csv", header=TRUE, sep=delim, dec=dec, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
Then, let's say your numeric columns is column 4
myDataFrame[, 4] <- as.numeric(myDataFrame[, 4]) # you can also refer to the column by "itsName"
Lastly, if you need any help with accomplishing in R the same tasks that you've done in Excel, there are plenty of folks here who would be happy to help you out
Problem
I am aware that there are similar questions on this site, however, none of them seem to answer my question sufficiently. This is what I have done so far: I have a csv file which I open in excel. I manipulate the columns algebraically to obtain a new column "A". I import the file into R using `read.csv()` and the entries in column A are stored as factors - I want them to be stored as numeric. I find this question on the topic: Imported a csv-dataset to R but the values becomes factors Following the advice, I include `stringsAsFactors = FALSE` as an argument in `read.csv()`, however, as Hong Ooi suggested in the page linked above, this doesn't cause the entries in column A to be stored as numeric values. A possible solution is to use the advice given in the following page: How to convert a factor to an integer\numeric without a loss of information? however, I would like a cleaner solution i.e. a way to import the file so that the entries of column entries are stored as numeric values. Cheers for any help!