I'm creating a function that requires users to upload a dataset with a vector of specific characters. Under the hood, I need one column that has the vector remain character, but I also need a separate column that is identical except that that it is a factor with specific levels.
When I try using levels() to assign the levels, I assumed R would match up the strings, but it's randomly assigning the order of the levels. How do I correct this behavior? Though the specific character values will always be the same, I won't know the order that users will upload them.
#Data to recreate the issue (note: The group and count columns are not relevant,
# but I kept them in case they may be related to the issue for some reason)
library(dplyr)
data <- tibble(group=factor(c(rep("A", 10), rep("B", 10), rep("C", 10),
rep("D", 10)), levels=c("A", "B", "C", "D")),
state=c(rep(c("Not Started", "Just Beginning",
"25% Complete", "40% Complete", "Halfway Done",
"75% Complete", "Mostly Done", "Completed",
"Follow Up", "Final Follow Up"), 4)),
count=c(100, 5, 4, 445, 67, 44, 25, 877, 240, 353,
48, 51, 48, 40, 141, 34, 50, 45, 34, 35,
140, 5, 8, 0, 17, 42, 0, 5, 3, 75,
477, 20, 59, 13, 1065, 1, 50, 353, 73, 104))
data$state_factor <- as.factor(data$state)
levels(data$state_factor) <- c("Not Started", "Just Beginning",
"25% Complete", "40% Complete", "Halfway Done",
"75% Complete", "Mostly Done", "Completed",
"Follow Up", "Final Follow Up")
head(data, 20) #Note how the state and state_factor columns are not identical
I'm flexible how I can accomplish this (i.e., is there a function in forcats I'm missing?), but it needs to have these levels in these orders.
Update:
Ok then you could use factor instead of as.factor and set levels directly:
data$state_factor <- factor(data$state, levels=c("Not Started", "Just Beginning",
"25% Complete", "40% Complete", "Halfway Done",
"75% Complete", "Mostly Done", "Completed",
"Follow Up", "Final Follow Up"))
Output:
> head(data, 20)
# A tibble: 20 × 4
group state count state_factor
<fct> <chr> <dbl> <fct>
1 A Not Started 100 Not Started
2 A Just Beginning 5 Just Beginning
3 A 25% Complete 4 25% Complete
4 A 40% Complete 445 40% Complete
5 A Halfway Done 67 Halfway Done
6 A 75% Complete 44 75% Complete
7 A Mostly Done 25 Mostly Done
8 A Completed 877 Completed
9 A Follow Up 240 Follow Up
10 A Final Follow Up 353 Final Follow Up
11 B Not Started 48 Not Started
12 B Just Beginning 51 Just Beginning
13 B 25% Complete 48 25% Complete
14 B 40% Complete 40 40% Complete
15 B Halfway Done 141 Halfway Done
16 B 75% Complete 34 75% Complete
17 B Mostly Done 50 Mostly Done
18 B Completed 45 Completed
19 B Follow Up 34 Follow Up
20 B Final Follow Up 35 Final Follow Up
Now they are not in alphabetical order:
> levels(data$state_factor)
[1] "Not Started" "Just Beginning" "25% Complete" "40% Complete" "Halfway Done" "75% Complete" "Mostly Done" "Completed"
[9] "Follow Up" "Final Follow Up"