Reshape multiple categorical variables to binary response variables

Question

I am trying to convert the following format:

mydata <- data.frame(movie = c(\"Titanic\", \"Departed\"), 
                     actor1 = c(\"Leo\", \"Jack\"         


        

Answer 1

An updated tidyr-based option is to convert to long-shape, use complete to fill in missing combinations of movies and actors, and then just convert a logical is.na test to a numeric value. Then reshape back to wide.

library(tidyr)

mydata %>%
  pivot_longer(starts_with("actor"), names_to = "acted") %>%
  complete(movie, value) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(acted = as.numeric(!is.na(acted))) %>%
  pivot_wider(names_from = value, values_from = acted)
#> # A tibble: 2 x 4
#>   movie     Jack   Leo  Kate
#>         
#> 1 Departed     1     1     0
#> 2 Titanic      0     1     1