Categorical variables - CatBoost

Intro to Machine Learning (2018)
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Remember error (in shared image) related to ‘categorical variables’ ? We used train_cats in lecture 2 to convert strings to pandas categories.

This CatBoost can also handle categorical variables directly and gives great results. I haven’t studied the underlying algorithm yet. But looks worth exploring.

Here is the link – https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2017/08/catboost-automated-categorical-data/

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@groverpr , is this working well for you?

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I am trying. Previously I was working on local machine. Seems like I need aws to run this.

Here is someone who tried and achieved good results with CatBoost – https://www.kaggle.com/aharless/simple-catboost-cv-lb-281

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@groverpr Cool, thanks. Why do you need AWS to use it?

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Parameter tuning takes time on my local machine.