Understanding Categorical Data in Data Science
In data science, data can be classified into different types, with categorical data being one of the most significant. Categorical data represents qualitative variables that describe characteristics or attributes rather than numerical values. Understanding categorical data is crucial in various machine learning and statistical analysis tasks. Types of Categorical Data Categorical data is broadly divided into two types: Nominal Data : This type of data represents categories without any intrinsic order. Examples include gender (male, female), eye color (blue, brown, green), and country of origin (USA, Canada, Japan). Ordinal Data : Unlike nominal data, ordinal data has a meaningful order but lacks a consistent scale between values. Examples include education levels (high school, bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D.), customer satisfaction ratings (poor, average, good, excellent), and economic class (low, middle, high). Handling Categorical Data in Data Science Since most machine learn...