R programming

R-002

We’ve seen that atomic vectors can be of type character, numeric (or double), integer, and logical. But what happens if we try to mix these types in a single vector?

What will happen in each of these examples? (hint: use class() to check the data type of your objects):

num_char <- c(1, 2, 3, "a")
num_logical <- c(1, 2, 3, TRUE)
char_logical <- c("a", "b", "c", TRUE)
tricky <- c(1, 2, 3, "4")

Why do you think it happens?

How many values in combined_logical are “TRUE” (as a character) in the following example:

num_logical <- c(1, 2, 3, TRUE)
char_logical <- c("a", "b", "c", TRUE)
combined_logical <- c(num_logical, char_logical)

You’ve probably noticed that objects of different types get converted into a single, shared type within a vector. In R, we call converting objects from one class into another class coercion. These conversions happen according to a hierarchy, whereby some types get preferentially coerced into other types. Can you draw a diagram that represents the hierarchy of how these data types are coerced?