Changing the data type to category

Since the rating column only has a few possible values, you'll change its data type to category in order to store the data more efficiently. You'll also specify a logical order for the categories, which will be useful for future exercises.

This exercise is part of the course

Analyzing Police Activity with pandas

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Exercise instructions

Create a CategoricalDtype object called cats that lists the weather ratings in a logical order: 'good', 'bad', 'worse'. Make sure to specify that the categories should be treated as ordered.
Use the cats object to change the data type of the rating column from object to category.
Examine the head of the rating column to confirm that the categories are logically ordered.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Specify the logical order of the weather ratings
cats = pd.CategoricalDtype([____], ordered=____)

# Change the data type of 'rating' to category
weather['rating'] = weather.rating.____(____)

# Examine the head of 'rating'
print(____)

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