https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Data-Science/How-EM-Handle-Categorical-Predictor-Variables/m-p/273326#M4048 <P>How does EM handle categorical predictor variables for all modeling nodes? Does it do encoding transforming like Linear Regression? If this is the case, will encoding affect prediction power for Neural Network, Decision Trees, Gradient Boosting etc.?</P> Thu, 26 May 2016 17:20:47 GMT aha123 2016-05-26T17:20:47Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Data-Science/How-EM-Handle-Categorical-Predictor-Variables/m-p/273326#M4048 <P>How does EM handle categorical predictor variables for all modeling nodes? Does it do encoding transforming like Linear Regression? If this is the case, will encoding affect prediction power for Neural Network, Decision Trees, Gradient Boosting etc.?</P> Thu, 26 May 2016 17:20:47 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Data-Science/How-EM-Handle-Categorical-Predictor-Variables/m-p/273326#M4048 aha123 2016-05-26T17:20:47Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Data-Science/How-EM-Handle-Categorical-Predictor-Variables/m-p/274133#M4069 <P>Neural networks do dummy encoding of categorical/class inputs like a regression model.</P> <P>&nbsp;</P> <P>Tree-based algorithms try grouping levels in every possible combination when determining the best split for each node&nbsp;of the tree.</P> Tue, 31 May 2016 15:56:51 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Data-Science/How-EM-Handle-Categorical-Predictor-Variables/m-p/274133#M4069 WendyCzika 2016-05-31T15:56:51Z