Encoding categorical variables - one-hot
One of the columns in the volunteer
dataset, category_desc
, gives category descriptions for the volunteer opportunities listed. Because it is a categorical variable with more than two categories, we need to use one-hot encoding to transform this column numerically. Use pandas' pd.get_dummies()
function to do so.
This exercise is part of the course
Preprocessing for Machine Learning in Python
Exercise instructions
- Call
get_dummies()
on thevolunteer["category_desc"]
column to create the encoded columns and assign it tocategory_enc
. - Print out the
.head()
of thecategory_enc
variable to take a look at the encoded columns.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Transform the category_desc column
category_enc = pd.____(____)
# Take a look at the encoded columns
print(____)