FAQ: Variable Types - Variable Types Review

Frequently Asked Questions Python FAQ
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This community-built FAQ covers the “Variable Types Review” exercise from the lesson “Variable Types”.

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This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

Master Statistics with Python

FAQs on the exercise Variable Types Review

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2

In the summary, there’s a reference to .cat.codes accessor. Nowhere in the lesson is this covered. It’s also mentioned in the Census Variables exercise. Did a lesson get deleted?

9 Likes
3

+1 on this
I had the same problem,

2 Likes
4

Yes! Had the same doubt

1 Like
5

Same doubt what on earth is that

1 Like
8

Yes, same problem. I thought I had forgotten but checked my notes and there’s nothing about it.

1 Like
9

There is no clue on how to use .cat.codes during the leasson. If you follow the 5th hint, you can conclude:

auto['engine_codes'] = auto['engine_size'].cat. Codes print(auto.head())

And you will get the extra column based on the variable engine_size where small = 0, medium = 1 and large =2:

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10

Your codebyte won’t work here b/c it needs more info.

Also, everyone is right; there used to be a discussion in the lesson about using cat.codes.
You might want to report the discrepancy in the lesson under “get Unstuck> Other”.

cat.codes assigns a numerical value to each corresponding categorical item in a series and returns it.

ex:

data = ['green', 'blue', 'purple', 'blue', 'green', 'green', 'orange']
cat_series = pd.Series(data, dtype='category')

print(cat_series)

0     green
1      blue
2    purple
3      blue
4     green
5     green
6    orange
dtype: category
Categories (4, object): ['blue', 'green', 'orange', 'purple']

print(cat_series.cat.codes)

0    1
1    0
2    3
3    0
4    1
5    1
6    2
dtype: int8

Also, this info is in the Pandas docs:

https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/user_guide/categorical.html

2 Likes