Create Categories Based On Integer & Numeric Range in R (2 Examples)

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to construct categorical variables based on integers and numeric ranges in R programming.

The tutorial contains this information:

Let’s dig in!

Example 1: Convert Integer into Categorical Data

Example 1 illustrates how to create a categorical vector using an integer (e.g. a person’s age in years) as input data.

Consider the following integer vector in R:

num1 <- c(1, 4, 3, 7, 1, 4, 3, 3, 7)    # Create numeric example data
num1                                    # Print numeric example data
# [1] 1 4 3 7 1 4 3 3 7

As you can see in the RStudio console, our example vector contains some random integer values.

Let’s check the class of our data:

class(num1)                             # Class of data
# [1] "numeric"

The data type of our input data is numeric (the same R code could be applied to the integer class).

Now, we can convert this numeric vector to the factor class (i.e. categorical data) using the as.factor function:

cat1 <- as.factor(num1)                 # Convert numeric to factor
cat1                                    # Print categorical data
# [1] 1 4 3 7 1 4 3 3 7
# Levels: 1 3 4 7

Have a look at the previous output of the RStudio console: The values are the same, but the data has been grouped into factor levels.

We can also check the class of our final data object using the class function:

class(cat1)                             # Class of data
# [1] "factor"

It’s a factor!

In this example we have used the actual integer values as categories. However, it is also possible to group a numeric vector into categorical ranges.

You guessed it… That’s what I’m going to show next.

Example 2: Convert Numerical Ranges into Categorical Data

Example 2 illustrates how to convert continuous numerical ranges into discrete categories defined by intervals. Let’s first create some random example data in R:

set.seed(6042397)                       # Set random seed
num2 <- rnorm(100)                      # Create numeric example data
head(num2)                              # Head of numeric example data
# [1]  1.2645445 -0.4518619 -0.4574372  0.7558008 -0.4175519 -1.1232298

The previous output shows the first six values of our example vector. As you can see, we have created a vector consisting of random numeric values.

We can now convert this vector into categorical ranges:

cat2 <- numeric()                       # Create empty data object
cat2[num2 < - 1] <- 1                   # Assign categories based on numeric range
cat2[num2 >= - 1 & num2 < 0] <- 2
cat2[num2 >= 0 & num2 < 1] <- 3
cat2[num2 >= 1] <- 4
cat2 <- as.factor(cat2)                 # Convert numeric to factor
head(cat2)                              # Head of categorical data
# [1] 4 2 2 3 2 1
# Levels: 1 2 3 4

The previous output shows our final result: A categorical factor vector with four different categories (i.e. 1, 2, 3, and 4).

Video, Further Resources & Summary

I have recently released a video on my YouTube channel, which shows the content of this article. You can find the video below:

In addition, you might want to have a look at some of the other articles of Statistics Globe.

• Split Vector into Chunks
• Count Observations by Factor Level
• Convert Data Frame Column to Numeric in R
• All R Programming Tutorials

In summary: In this R tutorial you have learned how to convert numeric and integer data to categorical. Let me know in the comments, if you have any additional questions.