Factor is R’s term for a nominal variable (also known as categorical variable).

Now imagine that you’ve used the numeric code to tabulate the eye colors of 14
people and then turned those codes into a vector:
> eye_color <- c(2,2,4,1,5,5,5,6,1,3,6,3,1,4)
Next, you use the factor() function to turn eye_color into a factor:
> feye_color <- factor(eye_color)
Finally, you assign the levels of the factor:
> levels(feye_color) <- c("amber","blue", "brown","gray","green",
"hazel")
Now, if you examine the eye color data in terms of the factor levels, it looks like
this:
> feye_color
[1] blue blue gray amber green green green hazel amber
[10] brown hazel brown amber gray
Levels: amber blue brown gray green hazel
Lists
In R, a list is a collection of objects that aren’t necessarily of the same type.
Sup-
pose that in addition to the eye color of each person in the example in the preced-
ing section, you collect an “empathy score” based on a personality test. The scale
runs from 0 (least empathy) to 100 (most empathy). Here’s the vector for these
people’s empathy data:
> empathy_score <- c(15,21,45,32,61,74,53,92,83,22,67,55,42,44)
You want to combine the eye color vector in coded form, the eye color vector in
factor form, and the empathy score vector into one collection named eyes_and_
empathy . You use the list() function for this task:
> eyes_and_empathy <- list(eyes_code=eye_color, eyes=feye_color,
empathy=empathy_score)
Note that you name each argument ( eyes_code , eyes , and empathy ). This causes
R to use those names as the names of the list components.