Creating dummy variables based on string variables in R

Question

Suppose I have data as follows:

people <- c("John", "Paul", "George", "Ringo", "Mick", "Keith", "Bill", "Charlie", "Brian")

colors <- c("Red", "Blue", "Green", "Red", "Red", "Green", "Green", "Blue", "Blue")

df <- cbind(people, colors)

How can I transform my df such that it extracts the content from the "colors" column and makes it into columns, as below:

Red <- c(1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0)
Blue <- c(0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1)
Green <- c(0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0)

df_dummies <- do.call("cbind", list(people, Red, Blue, Green))
df_dummies

Thanks!

can a person have only one color assigned?

Eric
– Eric

2022-06-21 12:46:30 +00:00
Commented Jun 21, 2022 at 12:46 — Eric
– Eric, Commented Jun 21, 2022 at 12:46

Eric · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-21 12:50:51Z

2

data.frame(
  people = people,
  Red = as.integer(colors=="Red"),
  Green = as.integer(colors=="Green"),
  Blue = as.integer(colors=="Blue")
           )

answered Jun 21, 2022 at 12:50

Eric

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Comments

hello_friend · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-21 13:15:18Z

1

Base R solution:

with(
  data.frame(df),
  cbind(
    people = people,
    setNames(
      data.frame(+outer(colors, unique(colors),`==`)),
      unique(colors)
    )
  )
)

answered Jun 21, 2022 at 13:15

hello_friend

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