Data type conversion changes values into representations that downstream analysis can use. For machine learning, categorical strings such as venue and play type are mapped to numeric codes. section 6.2.2
A practical conversion workflow:
- Define explicit mappings: Road becomes 0 and Home 1; Run becomes 0 and Pass 1. section 6.2.2
Football play data
Mapping venue and play type produces numeric predictors, while the resulting table contains integer and floating-point columns suitable for decision trees and random forests.
