You would like to train a Random Forest classifier on data that contains discreet values that have some order (for instance a column size with possible values of small, medium large). What is the name of such a variable? How do you convey this information to `pandas`?

Answer

These are ordinal variables. You can pass this information onto pandas by setting the column to be of type category and passing in the order.

Relevant part of lecture

You would like to train a Random Forest classifier on data that contains discreet values that have some order (for instance a column size with possible values of small, medium large). What is the name of such a variable? How do you convey this information to pandas?