dummy coding for certain variable

Question

I have a dataframe that looks like this

df <- data.frame(task       = c(1, 2,  3, 4, 5, NA),
                 day        = c(10, 6,  7, 9, 9, 10),
                 deadline   = c(7, 12, 9, 7, 9, NA),
                 completion = c(1, 1,  1, 1, 0, NA))

Now I want to create a dummy variable that shows if a task was overdue on the day of completion, therefore I have created this code, somehow it does not give me the right results.

df$overduetask <- ifelse(df$completion == 1 & df$day > df$deadline, 1,0)

So my thought behind this is, if a task was completed (completion = 1) and the day is greater than the deadline, then the task is overdue. The output i get for the overdue variable is only 0's, which i manually checked and cannot be true.

Answer 1

It works for me:

df$overduetask <- ifelse(df$completion == 1 & df$day >df$deadline, 1,0)

Have you spell it wrong cllw$ instead of df$ ?

Hi, has I said, it works for me:

eduardo> str(df)
'data.frame':   6 obs. of  5 variables:
 $ task       : num  1 2 3 4 5 NA
 $ day        : num  10 6 7 9 9 10
 $ deadline   : num  7 12 9 7 9 NA
 $ completion : num  1 1 1 1 0 NA
 $ overduetask: num  1 0 0 1 0 NA

I suspect what could be your problem... It happened many times to me in R: When you check completion == 1 probably the test is failing because of rounding problems, for example if you have completion defined as LONG or FLOAT. You can try:

df$overduetask <- ifelse(as.integer(df$completion) == 1 & df$day > df$deadline, 1,0)

I hope it helps