R: Simplifying code to convert letter grades to numeric grades

Question

I have written a function in R that will convert a data frame containing letter grades into numeric grades. I then use sapply() on each column of the data frame. Is there a

Answer 1

I would rewrite your convert_grades function as follows:

convert_grades <- function(x) {
  A <- factor(x, levels=c("A+", "A", "A-",
                     "B+", "B", "B-",
                     "C+", "C", "C-",
                     "D+", "D", "D-", "F"))
  values <- c(4.3, 4, 3.7, 
              3.3, 3, 2.7,
              2.3, 2, 1.7,
              1.3, 1, 0.7, 0)
  values[A]
}

Then, I would do the conversion like this:

num_grades <- grades
num_grades[] <- lapply(num_grades, convert_grades)
num_grades
  final_exam quiz_avg homework_avg
1        2.0      4.0            4
2        1.7      2.7            4
3        1.3      3.3            4
4        3.3      3.3            4
5        0.0      3.3            4
6        3.0      3.7            4