In this video we introduce read.table() for reading data from an external file into a data frame in R. We illustrate the use of this function via Example #1 in Mod9Script.R; you should download that script, open it in RStudio and follow along. This video discusses the default behavior in read.table() and related functions whereby columns in the input data file with character string data are turned into factors in the resulting data frame. We show how to alter that default so that character string data are turned into variables of class "character" and we discuss the construct of a class in R and, especially, the "factor" class.
This video is essential viewing.