title: Grouping Values into Brackets
body: <p>I have question about grouping data into specific categories.</p>
  
  <p>Generally, if I have a factor variable, I would perform something like below to bucket/recode the data into a preferred pattern:</p>
  
  <pre><code>educ = NA
  educ[educ2 %in% levels(educ2)[c(5,8)]] &lt;- "HS or Some College"
  educ[educ2 %in% levels(educ2)[2:3]] &lt;- "College Degree"
  educ[educ2 %in% levels(educ2)[c(4,6)]] &lt;- "Advanced Degree" 
  educ[educ2 %in% levels(educ2)[c(1,7,9)]] &lt;- NA
  educ = factor(educ)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, I'm struggling with trying to regroup a factor variable, TIME, which has 10,000 + levels. The data is structured as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; levels(wj$time)
      [1] "0:00:05"  "0:00:07"  "0:00:08"  "0:00:10"  "0:00:13"  "0:00:15"  "0:00:18"  "0:00:23"  "0:00:31"  "0:00:34"  "0:00:36" 
     [12] "0:00:39"  "0:00:41"  "0:00:47"  "0:00:48"  "0:00:54"  "0:00:55"  "0:00:56"  "0:00:59"  "0:01:01"  "0:01:02"  "0:01:03" 
     [23] "0:01:13"  "0:01:17"  "0:01:31"  "0:01:33"  "0:01:41"  "0:01:44"  "0:01:48"  "0:01:50"  "0:01:52"  "0:01:53"  "0:01:55" 
     [34] "0:02:08"  "0:02:12"  "0:02:13"  "0:02:21"  "0:02:26"  "0:02:27"  "0:02:30"  "0:02:32"  "0:02:33"  "0:02:36"  "0:02:37" 
     [45] "0:02:38"  "0:02:43"  "0:02:45"  "0:02:53"  "0:02:56"  "0:03:07"  "0:03:15"  "0:03:19"  "0:03:21"  "0:03:22"  "0:03:24" 
     [56] "0:03:30"  "0:03:36"  "0:03:39"  "0:03:41"  "0:03:49"  "0:03:56"  "0:03:59"  "0:04:02"  "0:04:04"  "0:04:07"  "0:04:10" 
     [67] "0:04:11"  "0:04:12"  "0:04:14"  "0:04:16"  "0:04:17"  "0:04:19"  "0:04:22"  "0:04:27"  "0:04:28"  "0:04:30"  "0:04:37" 
     [78] "0:04:39"  "0:04:41"  "0:04:49"  "0:04:51"  "0:04:52"  "0:04:53"  "0:04:54"  "0:05:05"  "0:05:06"  "0:05:20"  "0:05:22" 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm just not sure how to quickly bucket the data into specific brackets when there are so many factor levels. I'd like to group them into perhaps <code>0:12:00 to 0:05:00</code> and <code>0:05:01 to 0:10:00</code> and so forth. With so many factor levels, I'm just a little lost on how to identify when to start and end bucketing. Can anyone provide any help? With 10,000 + buckets, this becomes an issue with how I would traditionally do things.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>