Changing variable from factor to numeric changes the order

Question

I am working on a text analysis project in R where I'm attempting to identify words that tend to be used more by one group compared to another (based on bayesian probability). I now have a list with words and word loadings (factors). When I convert the word loadings from factor to numeric, the order changes. Why is this and how do I solve it?

Then running the following code:

words$top_words <- as.numeric(words$top_words)

Thank you very much for your help!

Answer 1

words$top_words is factor, hence when converted to numeric they are changed to underlying numbers. To safely convert factors to numbers we can do

words$top_words <- as.numeric(as.character(words$top_words)) 

Answer 2

一个选择也是利用levels会更快

words$top_words <- as.numeric(levels(words$top_words)[words$top_words])