Introduction
The forcats package provides tools for working with factors. It makes factor handling intuitive.
Creating Factors
library(forcats)
# Simple factor
f <- factor(c("a", "b", "a", "c"))
# With fct() functions
f <- fct(c("a", "b", "a", "c"))
Factor Level Manipulation
f <- factor(c("a", "b", "a", "c"))
# Reorder levels
fct_reorder(f, .x = c(1, 2, 1, 3))
# Lump levels together
fct_lump(f, n = 2)
# Collapse levels
fct_collapse(f, "new" = c("a", "b"))
# Rename levels
fct_recode(f, "A" = "a", "B" = "b")
Factor Order
f <- factor(c("low", "medium", "high"))
# Reorder by frequency
fct_infreq(f)
# Reorder by appearance
fct_inorder(f)
# Manual reorder
fct_relevel(f, "low", "medium", "high")
Summary
forcats makes factor manipulation easy. Use these functions for categorical data handling.