Encoding Time Values

Question

I am using Python/Scikit to do data encoding before I go ahead and train my Neural Network. I have a few columns that look like this

07:05:00
08:41:00
17:25:00
12:58:00
08:56:00
11:59:00
17:25:00
15:24:00

Any suggestions on how to encode this? Or is leaving it like this fine?

i recommend using datetime in python to extract features from the timestamp: docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html — Vadim Smolyakov, Aug 16, 2017 at 19:30

CalZ · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-29 19:11:35Z

2

A common step in "feature engineering" is parsing these out into multiple values that might give you additional information during ML. For example:

If you also had day, that would open a lot more to detect seasonality like:

answered Jun 29, 2017 at 19:11

CalZ

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Patrick Zawadzki · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-29 18:39:59Z

1

I have decided to convert the strings into seconds. Since these are all Time of Day values, I will convert them to contiguous seconds.

answered Jun 29, 2017 at 18:39

Patrick Zawadzki

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$\begingroup$ in your training (and test) data did you then replaced the Date_time column with a 'contiguous_secs' (int) column? $\endgroup$
– sAguinaga
Dec 9, 2019 at 17:20

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2 Answers 2