Reshaping DataFrames with Dummies
Explore how to reshape DataFrames by creating dummy columns from categorical data. Understand the step-by-step process to convert string categories into numeric dummy variables using pandas functions like get_dummies, idxmax, and NumPy methods. Gain practical skills to prepare data for analysis and machine learning by efficiently handling and reversing dummy encoding.
We'll cover the following...
Various patterns pop up when we start analyzing data, giving us the tools that we need to deal with them.
Dummy columns
Creating dummy columns is one way to convert a categorical column into numeric columns. The process is straightforward. If we have a column that has repeated string values, we can create a new column for each of those values and insert a 1 or a 0 in each new column if it corresponds to the original value.
We’ll look at a concrete example using the ...