Timeline for Tags around categorical data coding / representation
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 26, 2017 at 16:02 | comment | added | amoeba | Ttnphns, @gung has implemented it (see Update at the top of my answer), so you could mark my answer as accepted to "close" the issue (if you consider it closed). | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 6:39 | comment | added | amoeba | I will wait until the mod election is over: let's see who our new mods will be :) | |
| Aug 8, 2017 at 6:55 | comment | added | ttnphns | @amoeba, Your position clearly got more supporters. I think you are free now to do what you have proposed: ask to recover [dummy-variables] and tie it with [categorical-encoding] | |
| Jul 30, 2017 at 14:54 | comment | added | Scortchi Mod | I don't get the last reason either. How can someone understand what dummy variables are without also understanding that they encode categorical variables? | |
| Jul 29, 2017 at 13:25 | comment | added | ttnphns |
@Peter, some people (mostly of data scientists, ML'ers, computer scientists) may visit this site. They may know and correctly understand what "dummy variables" or "one-hot variables" are, by structure. However, they might never consider them in the milieu of categorical encoding. I.e. that the variables represent a categorical variable. They might even don't know what is ANOVA. I stand for that we should not make [dummy-variables] a junior synonym of anything; this tag has enough rights to exist on its own.
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| Jul 29, 2017 at 12:32 | comment | added | Peter Flom Mod | @ttnphns But if dummy variables linked to encoding, then they would find that wouldn't they? Dummy variables, on a statistics site, seems to me to have to have something to do with encoding. And, if we did include dummy variables, almost all of its use here on CV would be about that. | |
| Jul 29, 2017 at 12:23 | comment | added | ttnphns | @Peter consider please my last "reason" in the answer. Some data scientists and algorithm developers will be imagining/playing with/doing input/reading about "dummy" or "one-hot" sets of binary vectors even without thinking about such subjects as "categorical data", "nominal variable", "coding of categorical data", even maybe not aware that such data and such coding exist. Yet, they are working right with "dummy variables". | |
| Jul 29, 2017 at 11:46 | comment | added | Peter Flom Mod | @ttnphns I don't really see how dummy variables can be used in contexts that don't involve categorical data. | |
| Jul 29, 2017 at 7:13 | comment | added | ttnphns | @Peter please read my last comment. | |
| Jul 29, 2017 at 7:13 | comment | added | ttnphns | @Alexis, but did you not like my reasons? For example, the last one. Dummy variables can appear in contexts not even bothered with "categorical data". As I've said already, strictly definitionally dummies are a subset of [categorical-encoding]. But practically and psychologically they only overlap to some extent with it. If we don't create [dummy-variables] we'll bring much confusion and inconvenience to users. | |
| Jul 28, 2017 at 21:38 | comment | added | Alexis |
@PeterFlom You hit the nail on the head there. There's also the issue that [dummy-variables] is a not obviously overloaded term that can misleadingly connote a single topic, whereas [categorical-encoding] reads as a broader topical domain (at least to me), and as you point out the issues in that domain are interrelated. I feel we should not create [dummy-variables], unless we perhaps create it as a "synonymn" that points at [categorical-encoding]
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| Jul 28, 2017 at 13:44 | comment | added | ttnphns | Stephan Kolassa has just informed me that he read the discussion and he has no own opinion. | |
| Jul 28, 2017 at 13:03 | comment | added | Peter Flom Mod | I think mapping all the different encodings to [categorical encoding] makes sense. I think a lot of people will search for dummy coding, but it's good teaching to show them that dummy coding is only one form of encoding (if they don't already know) and it allows for writing a single, informative description, rather than multiple ones. I upvoted @amoeba 's answer; I did not downvote this one, as it is helpful, I just disagree. | |
| Jul 28, 2017 at 8:22 | comment | added | amoeba | usεr11852 wrote in chat: "I agree with you so I upvoted your answer but I did not downvote ttphns. (I usually refrain from downvoting Meta answers unless outright harmful.) I think that gung's comment about [one-hot] etc. is spot on. There will be some people that do not see the association immediately but generally it is not a big issue in my opinion and will quickly resolve itself." On the other hand, Glen_b commented under my answer: "I also upvoted ttnphns' answer since I find myself in agreement with it [...]". So it's 3:3 at the moment... :-/ | |
| Jul 27, 2017 at 12:28 | comment | added | gung - Reinstate Monica |
I agree w/ @amoeba. For the most part, [dummy-variables] would be overlapping w/ [categorical-encoding]. To the extent that you might want [dummy-variables] on seemingly unrelated threads about algorithms, there is little chance of it ever really being used correctly, IMO. The point that some people will be familiar w/ the term 'dummy coding', or the term 'one hot', that is reasonable, but to me, it argues that we should also make those two tags & immediately make them synonyms of [categorical-encoding].
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| Jul 27, 2017 at 10:03 | comment | added | mdewey | (+1) My feeling, for what it is worth, is that many beginners may understand the term dummy variable but would not immediately think of categorical encoding so I do see a role for it. It does seem to me to form a proper subset of categorical encoding so I would be happy with that. I do not feel super strongly about this so I shall not be crying into my beer if it does not go through. | |
| Jul 27, 2017 at 7:01 | history | edited | ttnphns | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 213 characters in body
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| Jul 26, 2017 at 18:15 | comment | added | ttnphns | @amoeba, evil or not evil, things are (can be) classified hierarchically. If always we are to keep only the parent tag we in the end are left with just tag [everything]. :-) Practical reasons to leave exist some "good" junior subsets is what human thinking is about. | |
| Jul 26, 2017 at 18:09 | comment | added | amoeba | I consider subset tags evil; sometimes it is a necessary evil. In this case it does not look necessary to me. But that's just my opinion. Let's see what others will say. | |
| Jul 26, 2017 at 17:40 | comment | added | ttnphns | @amoeba, [anova] completely belongs to [linear model] while the latter completely belongs to [generalized linear]. Still, we have all these popular tags as separate. It is reasonable. Logically, didactically. | |
| Jul 26, 2017 at 17:30 | comment | added | ttnphns |
I would encourage readers to comment on, more than up/down vote. It is strange how you can "measure" overlap WAY too strong. It was your intuition which is all right. Mine was different. I expressed some reasons to support it. Also, I think that in some special cases we could well keep separate tags which are much overlap. I'd say the current is such a case. Note that definitionally dummies are just the subset of "cat. encoding", but psychologically they are enough different for many users, think I.
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| Jul 26, 2017 at 17:12 | comment | added | amoeba | (Practically speaking, I'd say we now have to wait at least 1 week before we can decide on the further course of action. I encourage everybody who reads this to either upvote or downvote this answer and ideally to leave a comment as well.) | |
| Jul 26, 2017 at 17:09 | comment | added | amoeba | I am not going to downvote because I think it's others who should choose between our suggestions, but I'd like to re-iterate that I am against this suggestion, and the main reason is that I am (as a general principle) against strongly overlapping or subset tags. Two distinct tags [categorical-encoding] and [dummy-variables], imho, would overlap WAY too strong to warrant their separate existence. For that reason I am happy to consider the meaning of [categorical-encoding] general enough to be able to include all possible uses that you give in your bullet list. | |
| Jul 26, 2017 at 16:43 | history | answered | ttnphns | CC BY-SA 3.0 |