Category Encoders¶
A set of scikit-learn-style transformers for encoding categorical variables into numeric with different techniques. While ordinal, one-hot, and hashing encoders have similar equivalents in the existing scikit-learn version, the transformers in this library all share a few useful properties:
First-class support for pandas dataframes as an input (and optionally as output)
Can explicitly configure which columns in the data are encoded by name or index, or infer non-numeric columns regardless of input type
Can drop any columns with very low variance based on training set optionally
Portability: train a transformer on data, pickle it, reuse it later and get the same thing out.
Full compatibility with sklearn pipelines, input an array-like dataset like any other transformer
Usage¶
install as:
pip install category_encoders
or
conda install -c conda-forge category_encoders
To use:
import category_encoders as ce
encoder = ce.BackwardDifferenceEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.BaseNEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.BinaryEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.CatBoostEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.CountEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.GLMMEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.HashingEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.HelmertEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.JamesSteinEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.LeaveOneOutEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.MEstimateEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.OneHotEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.OrdinalEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.SumEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.PolynomialEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.TargetEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder = ce.WOEEncoder(cols=[...])
encoder.fit(X, y)
X_cleaned = encoder.transform(X_dirty)
All of these are fully compatible sklearn transformers, so they can be used in pipelines or in your existing scripts. If the cols parameter isn’t passed, every non-numeric column will be converted. See below for detailed documentation
Contents: