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BrisklyBrusque t1_iy3s0ha wrote

Reply to comment by olmec-akeru in [D] What method is state of the art dimensionality reduction by olmec-akeru

Cool links. I’ll add “entity embeddings” into the mix. Entity embeddings reimagine a categorical variable as a continuous-valued vector and allow us to skip one-hot encoding.

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olmec-akeru OP t1_iy7a1yc wrote

I fear that the location in the domain creates a false relationship to those closer on the same domain

i.e. if you encode at 0.1, 0.2, …, 0.9 you're saying that the category encoded to 0.2 is more similar to 0.1 and 0.3 than it is to 0.9. This may not be true.

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BrisklyBrusque t1_iy8wfoa wrote

I freely admit I haven’t looked into the math. But my understanding was the embeddings are a learned representation. They are not arbitrary; instead they aim to put categories close to one another on a continuous scale only in those situations where it is justified.

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