Approach 1: You can use pandas' pd.get_dummies.
Example 1:
import pandas as pd
s = pd.Series(list('abca'))
pd.get_dummies(s)
Out[]:
a b c
0 1.0 0.0 0.0
1 0.0 1.0 0.0
2 0.0 0.0 1.0
3 1.0 0.0 0.0
Example 2:
The following will transform a given column into one hot. Use prefix to have multiple dummies.
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({
'A':['a','b','a'],
'B':['b','a','c']
})
df
Out[]:
A B
0 a b
1 b a
2 a c
# Get one hot encoding of columns B
one_hot = pd.get_dummies(df['B'])
# Drop column B as it is now encoded
df = df.drop('B',axis = 1)
# Join the encoded df
df = df.join(one_hot)
df
Out[]:
A a b c
0 a 0 1 0
1 b 1 0 0
2 a 0 0 1
Approach 2: Use Scikit-learn
Using a OneHotEncoder has the advantage of being able to fit on some training data and then transform on some other data using the same instance. We also have handle_unknown to further control what the encoder does with unseen data.
Given a dataset with three features and four samples, we let the encoder find the maximum value per feature and transform the data to a binary one-hot encoding.
>>> from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder
>>> enc = OneHotEncoder()
>>> enc.fit([[0, 0, 3], [1, 1, 0], [0, 2, 1], [1, 0, 2]])
OneHotEncoder(categorical_features='all', dtype=<class 'numpy.float64'>,
handle_unknown='error', n_values='auto', sparse=True)
>>> enc.n_values_
array([2, 3, 4])
>>> enc.feature_indices_
array([0, 2, 5, 9], dtype=int32)
>>> enc.transform([[0, 1, 1]]).toarray()
array([[ 1., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0.]])
Here is the link for this example: http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder.html
Answer from Sayali Sonawane on Stack OverflowPandas factorize and one hot encoding
What alternatives are there to one hot encoding?
How can I decode one hot vector? (and when can we use it?)
What is the difference between applying One Hot Encoding to a categorical column and changing the data type to categorical (in pandas)?
Approach 1: You can use pandas' pd.get_dummies.
Example 1:
import pandas as pd
s = pd.Series(list('abca'))
pd.get_dummies(s)
Out[]:
a b c
0 1.0 0.0 0.0
1 0.0 1.0 0.0
2 0.0 0.0 1.0
3 1.0 0.0 0.0
Example 2:
The following will transform a given column into one hot. Use prefix to have multiple dummies.
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({
'A':['a','b','a'],
'B':['b','a','c']
})
df
Out[]:
A B
0 a b
1 b a
2 a c
# Get one hot encoding of columns B
one_hot = pd.get_dummies(df['B'])
# Drop column B as it is now encoded
df = df.drop('B',axis = 1)
# Join the encoded df
df = df.join(one_hot)
df
Out[]:
A a b c
0 a 0 1 0
1 b 1 0 0
2 a 0 0 1
Approach 2: Use Scikit-learn
Using a OneHotEncoder has the advantage of being able to fit on some training data and then transform on some other data using the same instance. We also have handle_unknown to further control what the encoder does with unseen data.
Given a dataset with three features and four samples, we let the encoder find the maximum value per feature and transform the data to a binary one-hot encoding.
>>> from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder
>>> enc = OneHotEncoder()
>>> enc.fit([[0, 0, 3], [1, 1, 0], [0, 2, 1], [1, 0, 2]])
OneHotEncoder(categorical_features='all', dtype=<class 'numpy.float64'>,
handle_unknown='error', n_values='auto', sparse=True)
>>> enc.n_values_
array([2, 3, 4])
>>> enc.feature_indices_
array([0, 2, 5, 9], dtype=int32)
>>> enc.transform([[0, 1, 1]]).toarray()
array([[ 1., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0.]])
Here is the link for this example: http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder.html
Much easier to use Pandas for basic one-hot encoding. If you're looking for more options you can use scikit-learn.
For basic one-hot encoding with Pandas you pass your data frame into the get_dummies function.
For example, if I have a dataframe called imdb_movies:

...and I want to one-hot encode the Rated column, I do this:
pd.get_dummies(imdb_movies.Rated)

This returns a new dataframe with a column for every "level" of rating that exists, along with either a 1 or 0 specifying the presence of that rating for a given observation.
Usually, we want this to be part of the original dataframe. In this case, we attach our new dummy coded frame onto the original frame using "column-binding.
We can column-bind by using Pandas concat function:
rated_dummies = pd.get_dummies(imdb_movies.Rated)
pd.concat([imdb_movies, rated_dummies], axis=1)

We can now run an analysis on our full dataframe.
SIMPLE UTILITY FUNCTION
I would recommend making yourself a utility function to do this quickly:
def encode_and_bind(original_dataframe, feature_to_encode):
dummies = pd.get_dummies(original_dataframe[[feature_to_encode]])
res = pd.concat([original_dataframe, dummies], axis=1)
return(res)
Usage:
encode_and_bind(imdb_movies, 'Rated')
Result:

Also, as per @pmalbu comment, if you would like the function to remove the original feature_to_encode then use this version:
def encode_and_bind(original_dataframe, feature_to_encode):
dummies = pd.get_dummies(original_dataframe[[feature_to_encode]])
res = pd.concat([original_dataframe, dummies], axis=1)
res = res.drop([feature_to_encode], axis=1)
return(res)
You can encode multiple features at the same time as follows:
features_to_encode = ['feature_1', 'feature_2', 'feature_3',
'feature_4']
for feature in features_to_encode:
res = encode_and_bind(train_set, feature)