Factors in R: more than an annoyance?

Question

One of the basic data types in R is factors. In my experience factors are basically a pain and I never use them. I always convert to characters. I feel oddly like I\'m missi

Answer 1

ordered factors are awesome, if I happen to love oranges and hate apples but don't mind grapes I don't need to manage some weird index to say so:

d <- data.frame(x = rnorm(20), f = sample(c("apples", "oranges", "grapes"), 20, replace = TRUE, prob = c(0.5, 0.25, 0.25)))
d$f <- ordered(d$f, c("apples", "grapes", "oranges"))
d[d$f >= "grapes", ]