Hi,
I request you please give me the detailed explanation answer for the following query.
Can we pass binary integer categorical variable to PCA?
Waiting for your reply.
Thank you.
Hi Mohammad,
thanks for reaching out! That’s a great question!
First, when it comes to theory you could use PCA with categorical binary variables. The question is how accurate the results would be.
What you could do if you’d like to use PCA on categorical data is to create dummy variables. You can read a more detailed explanation here:
http://staskolenikov.net/talks/Gustavo-Stas-PCA-generic.pdf
Otherwise, you can use Multiple Factor Analysis instead. This method has the advantage of being able to handle a mixture of categorical and continuous variables better, as it balances the influence of each feature in the data set.
Hope this helps!
Best,
365 Eli