encode_median {categoryEncodings}

Encode a given factor variable using median encoding

Description

Transforms the original design matrix using a median encoding.

Usage

encode_median(X, fact, keep_factor = FALSE, encoding_only = FALSE)

Arguments

X

The data.frame/data.table to transform.

fact

The factor variable to encode by - either a positive integer specifying the column number, or the name of the column.

keep_factor

Whether to keep the original factor column(defaults to **FALSE**).

encoding_only

Whether to return the full transformed dataset or only the new columns. Defaults to FALSE and returns the full dataset.

Details

This might be somewhat lacking in theory (to the author's best knowledge), but feel free to try it and publish the results if they turn out interesting on some particular problem.

Value

A new data.table X which contains the new columns and optionally the old factor.

Examples

design_mat <- cbind( data.frame( matrix(rnorm(5*100),ncol = 5) ),
                     sample( sample(letters, 10), 100, replace = TRUE)
                     )
colnames(design_mat)[6] <- "factor_var"

encode_median(X = design_mat, fact = "factor_var", keep_factor = FALSE)