Label encoding

Label encoding is a technique for handling categorical data by converting each category into a unique integer. It’s suitable for categorical features with ordinal relationships, where there is a clear ranking or order among the categories.

For example, when dealing with educational levels such as “high school,” “bachelor’s,” “master’s,” and “Ph.D.,” label encoding can be used because there’s a clear order from the least to most advanced level of education.

Use case – employee performance analysis

A Human Resources (HR) department wants to analyze employee performance data to understand the relationship between employee ratings and other factors such as salary, years of experience, and department. They plan to use ML to predict employee ratings based on these factors.

The data

Let’s have a quick look at the data we have available for the performance analysis...