Cant convert factor to numeric in R

Question

I\'ve tried:

• i <- as.numeric(as.character(Impress))

• i <- as.numeric(as.character(levels(Impress)))

Answer 1

As far as the computer is concerned, , is not a number and hence any number string containing it must not be numeric, even if to a human these look like perfectly acceptable numbers.

Get rid of the , and then it will work, e.g. using gsub()

i <- as.numeric(gsub(",", "", as.character(Impress)))

E.g.

Impress <- c("24,085,563.00", "35,962,587.00", "31,714,513.00", "28,206,422.00")
gsub(",", "", as.character(Impress))
i <- as.numeric(gsub(",", "", as.character(Impress)))
i

R> gsub(",", "", as.character(Impress))
[1] "24085563.00" "35962587.00" "31714513.00" "28206422.00"
R> i
[1] 24085563 35962587 31714513 28206422
R> is.numeric(i)
[1] TRUE

Answer 2

Because the data has commas, R cannot convert it to a numeric. You have to remove the commas with sub() first and then convert:

i <- as.numeric(gsub(",", "", as.character(impress)))