Question

I have a series of value that include the empty string

levels(mydata$phone_partner_products)
“” “dont_know” “maybe_interesting”
“not_interesting” “very_interesting” “very_not_interesting”

If I make a frequencies table I get this
table(mydata$phone_partner_products)

                            dont_know    maybe_interesting 
            3752                  226                 2907 
 not_interesting     very_interesting very_not_interesting 
            1404                 1653                 1065

How can I reorder the columns in a more meaningful way?
How can I rename the empty string “” level?

Thank you a lot in advance.

Answer 1

Use levels() to reset the factor level you want to change:

> ff <- as.factor(sample(c("foo", "", "bar"),20,repl=TRUE))
> table(ff)
ff
    bar foo 
  6   8   6 
> levels(ff)
[1] ""    "bar" "foo"
> levels(ff)[1] <- "ooops"
> table(ff)
ff
ooops   bar   foo 
    6     8     6 
>