Factor levels in R Programming - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Factor levels

📖 Scenario: You are working with survey data where people's favorite fruits are recorded as text. To analyze this data properly, you need to convert the fruit names into a factor with specific levels.

🎯 Goal: Create a factor variable from a character vector of fruits with specified levels, so the data is ready for analysis.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a character vector called fruits with the values "apple", "banana", "cherry", "banana", "apple"

Create a vector called fruit_levels with the values "apple", "banana", "cherry", "date"

Create a factor called fruit_factor from fruits using fruit_levels as the levels

Print the fruit_factor to show the factor with levels

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Factors are used in R to handle categorical data like survey answers, product categories, or any group labels. Setting levels helps control the order and possible values.

💼 Career

Data analysts and statisticians use factors to prepare data for analysis and visualization, ensuring categories are handled correctly.

1

Create the character vector of fruits

Create a character vector called fruits with these exact values: "apple", "banana", "cherry", "banana", "apple"

R Programming

# Create the character vector fruits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the c() function to combine the fruit names into a vector.

2

Create the vector of factor levels

Create a character vector called fruit_levels with these exact values: "apple", "banana", "cherry", "date"

R Programming

fruits <- c("apple", "banana", "cherry", "banana", "apple")
# Create the character vector fruit_levels
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use c() again to list the levels in the order you want.

3

Create the factor with specified levels

Create a factor called fruit_factor from the vector fruits using the levels from fruit_levels

R Programming

fruits <- c("apple", "banana", "cherry", "banana", "apple")
fruit_levels <- c("apple", "banana", "cherry", "date")
# Create the factor fruit_factor with levels fruit_levels
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the factor() function with the levels argument.

4

Print the factor to see the levels

Print the variable fruit_factor to display the factor with its levels

R Programming

fruits <- c("apple", "banana", "cherry", "banana", "apple")
fruit_levels <- c("apple", "banana", "cherry", "date")
fruit_factor <- factor(fruits, levels = fruit_levels)
# Print fruit_factor
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(fruit_factor) to show the factor and its levels.