Equal frequency discretization in R

Question

I\'m having trouble finding a function in R that performs equal-frequency discretization. I stumbled on the \'infotheo\' package, but after some testing I found that the al

Answer 1

Here is a function that handle the error :'breaks' are not unique, and automatically select the closest n_bins value to the one you setted up.

equal_freq <- function(var, n_bins)
{
  require(ggplot2)

  n_bins_orig=n_bins

  res=tryCatch(cut_number(var, n = n_bins), error=function(e) {return (e)})
  while(grepl("'breaks' are not unique", res[1]) & n_bins>1)
  {
    n_bins=n_bins-1
    res=tryCatch(cut_number(var, n = n_bins), error=function(e) {return (e)})

  }
  if(n_bins_orig != n_bins)
    warning(sprintf("It's not possible to calculate with n_bins=%s, setting n_bins in: %s.", n_bins_orig, n_bins))

  return(res)
}

Example:

equal_freq(mtcars$carb, 10)

Which retrieves the binned variable and the following warning:

It's not possible to calculate with n_bins=10, setting n_bins in: 5.