MATLAB: Use cell arrays with neural networks in a regression problem.

cellcell arraycell arraysneural networkneural networks

I want to use Neural Networks to predict a numeric value using text and numerical data. Here is an example:
It's a regression problem. If I try to use the Neural fitting (nftool) app, only allows use numerical data.
A solution that I can think of is to assign numerical values to each class in the text data values , but I think it is too computationally expensive , as my dataset has a size 17000×40.
Is there any way to use neural networks in a regression problem using cell data type ?

Best Answer

First, convert your cell array to a table (cell2table). Tables make working with this type of data much easier.
Then, convert the cell strings to categoricals and then dummy code them using dummyvar or my dummytable, attached.
x = table(rand(3,1),{'A';'B';'C'});
x.Var2 = categorical(x.Var2);
xdummy = dummytable(x);
Xnumeric = table2array(xdummy)
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