sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder

class sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder(categories='auto', drop=None, sparse=True, dtype=<class 'numpy.float64'>, handle_unknown='error')[source]

Encode categorical features as a one-hot numeric array.

The input to this transformer should be an array-like of integers or strings, denoting the values taken on by categorical (discrete) features. The features are encoded using a one-hot (aka ‘one-of-K’ or ‘dummy’) encoding scheme. This creates a binary column for each category and returns a sparse matrix or dense array (depending on the sparse parameter)

By default, the encoder derives the categories based on the unique values in each feature. Alternatively, you can also specify the categories manually.

This encoding is needed for feeding categorical data to many scikit-learn estimators, notably linear models and SVMs with the standard kernels.

Note: a one-hot encoding of y labels should use a LabelBinarizer instead.

Read more in the User Guide.

Parameters
categories‘auto’ or a list of lists/arrays of values, default=’auto’.

Categories (unique values) per feature:

  • ‘auto’ : Determine categories automatically from the training data.

  • list : categories[i] holds the categories expected in the ith column. The passed categories should not mix strings and numeric values within a single feature, and should be sorted in case of numeric values.

The used categories can be found in the categories_ attribute.

drop‘first’ or a list/array of shape (n_features,), default=None.

Specifies a methodology to use to drop one of the categories per feature. This is useful in situations where perfectly collinear features cause problems, such as when feeding the resulting data into a neural network or an unregularized regression.

  • None : retain all features (the default).

  • ‘first’ : drop the first category in each feature. If only one category is present, the feature will be dropped entirely.

  • array : drop[i] is the category in feature X[:, i] that should be dropped.

sparseboolean, default=True

Will return sparse matrix if set True else will return an array.

dtypenumber type, default=np.float

Desired dtype of output.

handle_unknown‘error’ or ‘ignore’, default=’error’.

Whether to raise an error or ignore if an unknown categorical feature is present during transform (default is to raise). When this parameter is set to ‘ignore’ and an unknown category is encountered during transform, the resulting one-hot encoded columns for this feature will be all zeros. In the inverse transform, an unknown category will be denoted as None.

Attributes
categories_list of arrays

The categories of each feature determined during fitting (in order of the features in X and corresponding with the output of transform). This includes the category specified in drop (if any).

drop_idx_array of shape (n_features,)

drop_idx_[i] is the index in categories_[i] of the category to be dropped for each feature. None if all the transformed features will be retained.

See also

sklearn.preprocessing.OrdinalEncoder

performs an ordinal (integer) encoding of the categorical features.

sklearn.feature_extraction.DictVectorizer

performs a one-hot encoding of dictionary items (also handles string-valued features).

sklearn.feature_extraction.FeatureHasher

performs an approximate one-hot encoding of dictionary items or strings.

sklearn.preprocessing.LabelBinarizer

binarizes labels in a one-vs-all fashion.

sklearn.preprocessing.MultiLabelBinarizer

transforms between iterable of iterables and a multilabel format, e.g. a (samples x classes) binary matrix indicating the presence of a class label.

Examples

Given a dataset with two features, we let the encoder find the unique values per feature and transform the data to a binary one-hot encoding.

>>> from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder
>>> enc = OneHotEncoder(handle_unknown='ignore')
>>> X = [['Male', 1], ['Female', 3], ['Female', 2]]
>>> enc.fit(X)
OneHotEncoder(handle_unknown='ignore')

>>> enc.categories_
[array(['Female', 'Male'], dtype=object), array([1, 2, 3], dtype=object)]
>>> enc.transform([['Female', 1], ['Male', 4]]).toarray()
array([[1., 0., 1., 0., 0.],
       [0., 1., 0., 0., 0.]])
>>> enc.inverse_transform([[0, 1, 1, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 1, 0]])
array([['Male', 1],
       [None, 2]], dtype=object)
>>> enc.get_feature_names()
array(['x0_Female', 'x0_Male', 'x1_1', 'x1_2', 'x1_3'], dtype=object)
>>> drop_enc = OneHotEncoder(drop='first').fit(X)
>>> drop_enc.categories_
[array(['Female', 'Male'], dtype=object), array([1, 2, 3], dtype=object)]
>>> drop_enc.transform([['Female', 1], ['Male', 2]]).toarray()
array([[0., 0., 0.],
       [1., 1., 0.]])

Methods

fit(self, X[, y])

Fit OneHotEncoder to X.

fit_transform(self, X[, y])

Fit OneHotEncoder to X, then transform X.

get_feature_names(self[, input_features])

Return feature names for output features.

get_params(self[, deep])

Get parameters for this estimator.

inverse_transform(self, X)

Convert the back data to the original representation.

set_params(self, \*\*params)

Set the parameters of this estimator.

transform(self, X)

Transform X using one-hot encoding.
__init__(self, categories='auto', drop=None, sparse=True, dtype=<class 'numpy.float64'>, handle_unknown='error')[source]

Initialize self. See help(type(self)) for accurate signature.

fit(self, X, y=None)[source]

Fit OneHotEncoder to X.

Parameters
Xarray-like, shape [n_samples, n_features]

The data to determine the categories of each feature.

Returns
self
fit_transform(self, X, y=None)[source]

Fit OneHotEncoder to X, then transform X.

Equivalent to fit(X).transform(X) but more convenient.

Parameters
Xarray-like, shape [n_samples, n_features]

The data to encode.

Returns
X_outsparse matrix if sparse=True else a 2-d array

Transformed input.

get_feature_names(self, input_features=None)[source]

Return feature names for output features.

Parameters
input_featureslist of string, length n_features, optional

String names for input features if available. By default, “x0”, “x1”, … “xn_features” is used.

Returns
output_feature_namesarray of string, length n_output_features
get_params(self, deep=True)[source]

Get parameters for this estimator.

Parameters
deepboolean, optional

If True, will return the parameters for this estimator and contained subobjects that are estimators.

Returns
paramsmapping of string to any

Parameter names mapped to their values.

inverse_transform(self, X)[source]

Convert the back data to the original representation.

In case unknown categories are encountered (all zeros in the one-hot encoding), None is used to represent this category.

Parameters
Xarray-like or sparse matrix, shape [n_samples, n_encoded_features]

The transformed data.

Returns
X_trarray-like, shape [n_samples, n_features]

Inverse transformed array.

set_params(self, **params)[source]

Set the parameters of this estimator.

The method works on simple estimators as well as on nested objects (such as pipelines). The latter have parameters of the form <component>__<parameter> so that it’s possible to update each component of a nested object.

Returns
self
transform(self, X)[source]

Transform X using one-hot encoding.

Parameters
Xarray-like, shape [n_samples, n_features]

The data to encode.

Returns
X_outsparse matrix if sparse=True else a 2-d array

Transformed input.

Examples using sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder