How to convert categorical data to binary data in Python?

Categorical Data is data that corresponds to the Categorical Variable. A Categorical Variable is a variable that takes fixed, a limited set of possible values. For example Gender, Blood group, a person having country residential or not, etc.

Characteristics of Categorical Data :

• This is mostly used in Statistics.
• Numerical Operation like Addition, Subtraction etc. on this type of Data is not possible.
• All the values of Categorical Data are in Categories.
• It usually uses the Array Data Structure.

Example :

Categorical Data

A Binary Data is a Data which uses two possible states or values i.e. 0 and 1.Binary data is mostly used in various fields like in Computer Science we use it as under name Bit(Binary Digit), in Digital Electronic and mathematics we use it as under name Truth Values, and we use name Binary Variable in Statistics.

Characteristics :

• The (0 and 1) also referred to as (true and false), (success and failure), (yes and no) etc.
• Binary Data is a discrete Data and also used in statistics.

Example :

Binary Data

Conversion of Categorical Data into Binary Data

Our task is to convert Categorical data into Binary Data as shown below in python :

Step-by-step Approach:

Step 1) In order to convert Categorical Data into Binary Data we use some function which is available in Pandas Framework. That’s why Pandas framework is imported

Step2) After that a list is created and data is entered as shown below.

Step 3) After that Dataframe is created using pd.DataFrame() and here we add extra line i.e. print(data_frame) in order to show the Categorical Data Output as shown below:

Output:

Categorical Data

Step 4) Till step 3 we get Categorical Data now we will convert it into Binary Data. So for that, we have to the inbuilt function of Pandas i.e. get_dummies() as shown:

Here we use get_dummies() for only Gender column because here we want to convert Categorical Data to Binary data only for Gender Column.

output of step 4

Here we get output in binary code for Gender Column only. Here we have two options to use it wisely:

1. Add above output to Dataframe -> Remove Gender Column -> Remove Female column(if we want Male =1 and Female =0) -> Rename Male = Gender -> Show Output of Conversion.
2. Add above output to Dataframe -> Remove Gender Column -> Remove Male column( if we want Male =0 and Female =1) -> Rename Female = Gender -> Show Output of Conversion.

In the below program we used the first option and Write code accordingly as shown below:

Output:

Output

Below is the complete program based on the above approach:

Output:

Output