On different types of trees the branching factor can be either a static value throughout the tree, which only happens in perfect binary trees or an average branching factor which is most time the case for trees. The branching factor is one characteristic of a node next to depth and gives a clue how complex a tree gets.
Controlling blood pressure is not the only way to treat hypertension. A new study identified eight associated risk factors. Each risk factor addressed was associated with a 13% lower risk of premature ...
The levels of a factor are stored as character data type anyway (attributes(f)), so I don't think there is anything wrong with as.numeric(paste(f)). Perhaps it would be better to think why (in the specific context) you are getting a factor in the first place, and try to stop that. E.g., is the dec argument in read.table set correctly?
The replication factor of 3 includes the leader itself and 2 followers. Think of that factor in a more mathematical way: 1 times 3 still results in 3. Let me give an example. A topic created with 3 partitions, replication factor of 3 results in 9 replicas. Three of those nine are leaders, the other six will be followers. Unfortunately I didn't find something about that in the official ...
Performance: as.factor > factor when input is integer A factor variable is the next of kin of an integer variable. ... This means that converting an integer to a factor is easier than converting a numeric / character to a factor. as.factor just takes care of this.