One-hot encoding

Also written: one-hot

Turning a category into columns of 0s and 1s, with a 1 in the column of the matching category.

Other terms from the same lesson

• imputing: Filling in a missing value with a sensible guess, such as the column's median.
• median: The middle value once the numbers are sorted. Unlike the average, one huge value barely moves it.
• outlier: A value far from the rest, such as one order of $5,000 among orders of about $50. It can be a real event or a mistake.
• pipeline: A fixed series of steps that data goes through in order, such as fill gaps, rescale, then predict, so the steps can't get mixed up.
• standardization: Rescaling a column so its average is 0 and its standard deviation is 1, so columns measured in different units become comparable.