Question

Suppose you survey students regarding their sexual orientation, and code the results as 1=Hetrosexual, 2=Homosexual, 3=Bisexual, 4=Asexual. Here is the data: 1 2 4 2 4 1 2 1 3 4 2 2 3 1 1 1 3 2 2 1 3 4 1 2 1 3 4 3 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 Assume you read in the data as an integer vector S. However, the numbers need to be treated as values of a categorical variable in further analysis. What should you do with S to facilitate this? Choose the most appropriate answer. Convert S to a data frame: S = as.data.frame(S) Convert S to a character vector Convert S to a vector of factors Leave it as is, and do no calculations

Answer 1

I guess in the last line 3 options are given and we have to choose the best option for treating it as categorical values.

so we will analyse all the best option.

Let us understand what is categorical values - generally we have two types of values one is continuous and other is categorical values, categorical values are those which have very limited values and belongs to a finite group.

in this case we have four values 1, 2, 3, 4

now analyse our options

first option is convert S to a data frame

here is the code:

S <- c(1, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 1, 3 ,4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 2)

print(S)
S = as.data.frame(S)
print(S)

here is the ss of the output:

option 2: convert to a character vector

here is the code:

S <- c(1, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 1, 3 ,4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 2)

print(S)
S <- as.character(S)
print(S)

here is the ss of the output:

option 3: convert S to a vector of factors

here is the code:

S <- c(1, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 1, 3 ,4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 2)

print(S)
S <- factor(S)
print(S)

here is the ss of the output:

Now as we can see that in the last output where we have converted to a factor in R , this shows levels means the categories.

actually in R factors are used to represent the categorical values .

so best answer to represent is using factors in R

I hope this will help you so please give positive ratings :))