Unable to sort months column chronologically in R

ritm · July 30, 2020, 9:55am

I have a column called Month which is of character type in a dataframe.There are only three values:April,March and May.I have tried converting them to factors and even tried ordering them but they still appear in alphabetical order while using any functions or plots.Can you please help.

nirgrahamuk · July 30, 2020, 10:08am

please show the code you attempted, i.e the factor conversion

ritm · July 30, 2020, 10:51am

unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month<-as.factor(unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month)

unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month<-factor(unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month,levels=month.abb)

nirgrahamuk · July 30, 2020, 10:59am

the second approach is likely to work if month.abb contains properly ordered matching month levels to that seen in unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month

ritm · July 30, 2020, 11:13am

So what should I do then.Please suggest

nirgrahamuk · July 30, 2020, 11:20am

you should know what month.abb contains , and whether its correct for unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month.
If you want my opinion, you should tell me what these contain.
Would you like my advice on how to describe to me what they contain ?

ritm · July 30, 2020, 11:35am

They basically convert numeric variables to abbreviations.I have tried using month.name also but it doesn't work.Can you please advise and suggest any or the correct way(s) of sorting the months chronologically.

nirgrahamuk · July 30, 2020, 11:39am

unisim_usage_hours_2020<- data.frame(Month=c("Feb","Jan"))
month.abb <- c("Jan","Feb")

unisim_usage_hours_2020$Monthf <- factor(x=unisim_usage_hours_2020$Month,
                                         levels=month.abb)

arrange(unisim_usage_hours_2020,Monthf)

ritm · July 30, 2020, 12:05pm

So is there any way to do the same without converting it to factor as its still not yielding results.

nirgrahamuk · July 30, 2020, 12:16pm

For additional help , please provide a reprex
FAQ: How to do a minimal reproducible example ( reprex ) for beginners

ritm · July 30, 2020, 5:46pm

I was able to do it properly by using levels=month.name and then sorting on it.

ritm · July 30, 2020, 5:48pm

I had one more doubt.Now that it's an ordered column,so when I use it in pie chart in the legend section,it throws an error saying that legend is missing,default with no attributes.So the pie chart displays but no legends are shown.

nirgrahamuk · July 30, 2020, 7:24pm

if you provide a reprex, I can offer to debug it for you.

ritm · July 31, 2020, 6:45am

month_count_percent<-round((count_records_per_month$count/sum(count_records_per_month$count))*100,1)

pie(count_records_per_month$count, labels = month_count_percent, main = "2020 Machines per Month pie chart",col = rainbow(length(count_records_per_month$count)))
legend("topright",count_records_per_month$Month, cex = 0.8,
fill = rainbow(length(count_records_per_month$count)))

Error in as.graphicsAnnot(legend) :
argument "legend" is missing, with no default

nirgrahamuk · July 31, 2020, 6:55am

The syntax for legend is

legend(x, y=NULL, legend, fill, col, bg)

The error message is saying that the third param (legend) is not provided by you

system · August 21, 2020, 6:55am

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