No Label Left Behind: Alternative Encodings for Hierarchical Categoricals

Seeking a system that works for current and future codes

15 min read

20 hours ago

Photo by Gabriel Tenan on Unsplash

In my work as a data scientist, I see a lot of labels. Data contains zip code labels, gender labels, medical diagnosis labels, job title labels, stock ticker labels, you name it. Labels may be simple (shirt sizes of S,M, L) or complex (The…