Setting data type from imported data

mortiz

I find importing data from excel and then setting the data type for each column to be rather excruciating. Is there a way that I can do a select all and change them all to a specific value at once? I have 200 attributes and some are coming in as integers when I want reals, or polynominal vs date, etc... However 90% of it a real, and then I can change the remaining ones as oppose to doing every single one. Perhaps organizing the data by data type would be helpful so I dont have to search every column to find every single one that is different.

kayman

You could set the 'read all values as polynominal' tickbox, and then use for instance the Nominal to numerical operator and you filter on value_type is numerical, followed by the numerical to real operator. Should do the trick I think.

varunm1

Hello @mortiz

Here is the option. You need to click on show advanced parameters in the parameters of read excel.

varunm1

Hello @mortiz

The word poly means "many". I guess they named polynominal based on English meaning. So, incase you have more nominal values than 2 in that feature then it is called polynominal. If you have exactly 2 values, then its called Binominal.

Now the difference between nominal and polynominal is not much, Nominal is a general term, and polynominal and binominal comes under nominal values. 

For the algorithms to understand what kind of values is going inside them they created operators like nominal to binominal.

kayman

You could set the 'read all values as polynominal' tickbox, and then use for instance the Nominal to numerical operator and you filter on value_type is numerical, followed by the numerical to real operator. Should do the trick I think.

mortiz

Thanks for reply. Where is the tickbox to convert everything to polynominal?

varunm1

Hello @mortiz

Here is the option. You need to click on show advanced parameters in the parameters of read excel.

mortiz

Thanks for your help! I will just have to convert from here I suppose....

When I set it as polynominal, what exactly does that mean?

Whenever I search for this on internet all I get is polynomial. As if the term polynominal doesn’t exist. 

What different about nominal and polynominal?

thank you very much

varunm1

Hello @mortiz

The word poly means "many". I guess they named polynominal based on English meaning. So, incase you have more nominal values than 2 in that feature then it is called polynominal. If you have exactly 2 values, then its called Binominal.

Now the difference between nominal and polynominal is not much, Nominal is a general term, and polynominal and binominal comes under nominal values. 

For the algorithms to understand what kind of values is going inside them they created operators like nominal to binominal.