Order dataframe by month

Question

I have calculated the maximum counts per month in this data.frame:

counts <- data.frame(year = sort(rep(2000:2009, 12)), month = rep(month.abb,10), count          


        

Answer 1

Convert your "month" column into an ordered factor:

factor(count_max$month, month.abb, ordered=TRUE)
# [1] Apr Aug Dec Feb Jan Jul Jun Mar May Nov Oct Sep
# Levels: Jan < Feb < Mar < Apr < May < Jun < Jul < Aug < Sep < Oct < Nov < Dec

Example:

count_max$month <- factor(count_max$month, month.abb, ordered=TRUE)
count_max[order(count_max$month), ]
#    month max.count
# 5    Jan       482
# 4    Feb       408
# 8    Mar       483
# 1    Apr       489
# 9    May       369
# 7    Jun       432
# 6    Jul       344
# 2    Aug       470
# 12   Sep       474
# 11   Oct       450
# 10   Nov       492
# 3    Dec       366