How to handle categorical data for machine learning algorithms Packt Hub

The quality of data and the amount of useful information are key factors that determine how well a machine learning algorithm can learn. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that we make sure to encode categorical variables correctly, before we feed data into a machine learning algorithm. In this article, with simple yet effective examples we will explain how to deal with categorical data in computing machine learning algorithms and how we to map ordinal and nominal feature values to integer representations. The article is an excerpt from the book Python Machine Learning – Third Edition by Sebastian Raschka and Vahid Mirjalili. This book is a comprehensive guide to machine learning and deep learning with Python.