MATLAB: Creating dumthe variables in a dataset

dummy variables

Hi
I'm very new to Matlab…so thanks for your patience. I'm working with the hospital dataset that comes with Matlab (load hospital in Matlab). I want to create a new vector, say DummyGender by looking at the vector hospital.Sex. The rule is:
for x = 1:100;
    if hospital.Sex=='Male';
        gender{x}=1;
    else
        gender{x}=-1;
    end
end
this works, but I need to go ahead and transpose it, and then convert it to a numerical variable and then finally add it as another column in the dataset. Is there a more efficient way to do the same?
thanks C

Best Answer

transpose() is one way of writing the transpose operation.
It appears you are already creating a numeric value. 1 and -1 are numeric. If you mean that the cell array is to be converted to a numeric array, why not store it as a numeric array in the first place?
Efficient way? I would suggest
gender = zeros(100,1);
for x = 1  : 100
   if strcmp( hospital(x).Sex, 'Male')
     gender(x) = 1;
   else
     gender(x) = -1;
   end
end
after which no transpose operation is needed as it will already be a column vector.
Even more efficient would be just
Male_tf = strcmp( {hospital.Sex}, 'Male');
gender = 2 * Male_tf(:) - 1;
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