Appending Data Sets

Combine dataset variables of different types

It is fine to have variables of different types in a dataset. For example, it is OK to have 3 numeric variables and 2 string variables.

However, you really want each variable to maintain the same data type for all observations. To make things simple, let's say that you have datasets voters.csv and voters.xlsx and that it only has one variable, did_vote. In voters.csv, did_vote can be either a 0 if they did not vote, or a 1 if they did vote. In voters.xlsx, did_vote can be either a "No" if they did not vote, or a "Yes" if they did vote. Then you could do this:

// Load binary vector
vote_num = loadd("voters.csv", "did_vote");

// Load string vector
vote_str = xlsReadSA("voters.xlsx", "A2");

// Convert string variable to binary variable
from = "No" $| "Yes";
to = { 0, 1 };
vote_str = reclassify(vote_str, from, to);

// Combine both vectors (which are now numeric) into a single column vector
vote_num = vote_num | vote_str;

// Create a new Excel dataset with all observations
call saved(vote_num, "new_voters.xlsx", "did_vote");

If you want an example files to make the above example work, you can run this code:

// Create a vector of random zeros and ones
x1 = rndBernoulli(9, 1, 0.5);

saved(x1, "voters.csv", "did_vote");

// Create a vector of random 1's and 2's
idx = rndi(6, 1, 1|2);

// Create a vector "Yes" and "No"
txt = "Yes" $| "No";
x2 = txt[idx];

xlsWrite("did_vote", "voters.xlsx", "A1");
xlsWrite(x2, "voters.xlsx", "A2");