Create Dummy Data Frame in R (Example)

This tutorial illustrates how to construct a data frame with dummy variables in R.

The tutorial consists of this:

You’re here for the answer, so let’s get straight to the programming part…

Example: Construct Dummy Data Frame Using rbinom(), matrix() & as.data.frame() Functions

The following R syntax shows how to create a data frame containing multiple dummy variables in R.

We first need to set a random seed to make this example reproducible:

set.seed(2867754)                           # Set seed for reproducibility

Next, we can use the rbinom function to generate a random dummy vector:

dummy_vec <- rbinom(15, 1, prob = 0.3)      # Create dummy vector
dummy_vec                                   # Print dummy vector
#  [1] 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

In the next step, we can convert this dummy vector to a matrix:

dummy_mat <- matrix(dummy_vec, ncol = 3)    # Convert vector to matrix
dummy_mat                                   # Print dummy matrix

Table 1 shows the output of the previous R programming syntax – A matrix object containing three different dummy columns.

Finally, we can convert the matrix object to the data.frame class using the as.data.frame function:

data <- as.data.frame(dummy_mat)            # Convert matrix to data frame
data                                        # Print dummy data frame

As visualized in Table 2, we have managed to construct a data frame with dummy variables with the previous R programming syntax.

Video & Further Resources

Do you need more info on the R programming syntax of this article? Then you might want to have a look at the following video on my YouTube channel. In the video, I’m explaining the contents of this article in a live session in RStudio:

In addition, you may want to read the related posts on this website:

• Create a Data Frame in R
• Create Empty Data Frame in R
• Create Data Frame with n Rows & m Columns
• Create Data Frame of Unequal Lengths
• Create List of Data Frames
• The R Programming Language

To summarize: At this point you should know how to make a data frame with dummy columns in R. Let me know in the comments section below, in case you have any additional questions.