facttonum {MQMF}

facttonum converts a vector of numeric factors into numbers

Description

facttonum converts a vector of numeric factors into numbers. If the factors are not numeric then the outcome will be a series of NA. It is up to you to apply this function only to numeric factors. A warning will be thrown if the resulting output vector contains NAs

Usage

facttonum(invect)

Arguments

invect

the vector of numeric factors to be converted back to numbers

Value

an output vector of numbers instead of the input factors

Examples

 DepCat <- as.factor(rep(seq(100,600,100),2))
 print(DepCat)
 5 * DepCat[3]    # throws an error, cannot multiply a factor
 as.numeric(DepCat) # ordinal values of the factors
 as.numeric(levels(DepCat)) #converts the levels not the replicates
 DepCat <- facttonum(DepCat)
 DepCat / 2.0     # now all values back to values
 x <- factor(letters) 
 facttonum(x)     # this would be silly, characters are not numbers