Converting continuous data

Treating categorical data as continuous can have a serious impact on the quality of a model, especially if it's the target field (for example, producing a regression model rather than a binary model). To prevent this, you can convert integer ranges to categorical types such as Ordinal or Flag.

1. Double-click a Type node to open its properties. Expand the Type Operations section.
2. Specify a value for Set continuous integer field to ordinal if range less than or equal to.
3. Click Apply to convert the affected ranges.
4. If desired, you can also specify a value for Set categorical fields to None if they exceed this many values to automatically ignore large sets with many members.

Results of the conversion

• Where a Continuous field with integer storage is changed to Ordinal, the upper value is expanded to include all of the integer values through the upper value. For example, if you set the value to 5, the set of values is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
• If the Continuous field changes to Flag, the lower and upper values become the false and true values of the flag field.