Read in an variable as numeric

General
1

Hello, I just started my first RProject but sadly my data is read in wrong. Every variable value or number which contains an "," is quoted by R as "1,78". When I try to use a function for numeric numbers the program tells me, that it's not numeric. In the list of variables the variable $ Height is than listed as "1,72" "2,01" "1,80"

(Thats my data https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/haileewood/people-of-germany-east-west-division


people <- read.csv(file="data_people.csv", sep = ";", header = TRUE)

What is my mistake with the read.csv() function?

2

The read.csv() function also has the argument dec the sets the character used as the decimal separator. By default it is ".". You can either use

people <- read.csv(file="data_people.csv", sep = ";",  dec = ",")

or you can use

people <- read.csv2(file="data_people.csv")

The read.csv2() function has the defaults of dec = "," and sep = ";", settings commonly used in locales where the commas is the decimal separator, I believe. Note I dropped header = TRUE because that is the default in both cases. It does not do any harm to include it if you want to.

3

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