1 Feb 2012

Transformation of Several Variables in a Dataframe

This is how I transform several columns of a dataframe, i.e., with count-data into binary coded data (this would apply also for any other conversion..).

count1 <- count2 <- count3 <- count4 <- sample(c(rep(0, 10), 1:10))
some <- LETTERS[1:20]  
thing <- letters[1:20]  
mydf <- data.frame(count1, count2, count3, count4, some, thing)

ids <- grep("count", names(mydf))
myfun <- function(x) {ifelse(x > 0, 1, 0)}
mydf[, ids] <- lapply(mydf[, ids], myfun)

p.s.: Let me know if you know of a slicker way.
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4 comments :

  1. EDI16 February 2012 at 01:09

    There is a typo in line 4 ('data.frame').

    Another possibility for a presence-absence transformation would be vegan::decostand() :

    mydf[, ids] <- decostand(mydf[, ids], method = "pa")

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  2. Anonymous22 February 2012 at 23:43

    set.seed(1)
    x <- sample(0:100, 1E7, replace=TRUE, prob=c(0.5, rep(0.005, 100)))
    system.time(ifelse(x > 0, 1, 0))
    user system elapsed
    7.092 2.488 9.634
    system.time(as.numeric(x > 0))
    user system elapsed
    0.344 0.280 0.629

    For real biological datasets this is probably trivial (10 million records is perhaps far-fetched!).

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