[Python] What are the pros and cons between get_dummies (Pandas) and OneHotEncoder...

I'm learning different methods to convert categorical variables to numeric for machine-learning classifiers. I came across the pd.get_dummies method and sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder() and I wanted to see how they differed in terms of performance and usage.

I found a tutorial on how to use OneHotEncoder() on https://xgdgsc.wordpress.com/2015/0...scikit-learn-to-work-on-categorical-features/ since the sklearn documentation wasn't too helpful on this feature. I have a feeling I'm not doing it correctly...but

Can some explain the pros and cons of using pd.dummies over sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder() and vice versa? I know that OneHotEncoder() gives you a sparse matrix but other than that I'm not sure how it is used and what the benefits are over the pandas method. Am I using it inefficiently?

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from sklearn.datasets import load_iris
sns.set()

%matplotlib inline

#Iris Plot
iris = load_iris()
n_samples, m_features = iris.data.shape

#Load Data
X, y = iris.data, iris.target
D_target_dummy = dict(zip(np.arange(iris.target_names.shape[0]), iris.target_names))

DF_data = pd.DataFrame(X,columns=iris.feature_names)
DF_data["target"] = pd.Series(y).map(D_target_dummy)
#sepal length (cm) sepal width (cm) petal length (cm) petal width (cm) \
#0 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2
#1 4.9 3.0 1.4 0.2
#2 4.7 3.2 1.3 0.2
#3 4.6 3.1 1.5 0.2
#4 5.0 3.6 1.4 0.2
#5 5.4 3.9 1.7 0.4

DF_dummies = pd.get_dummies(DF_data["target"])
#setosa versicolor virginica
#0 1 0 0
#1 1 0 0
#2 1 0 0
#3 1 0 0
#4 1 0 0
#5 1 0 0

from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder, LabelEncoder
def f1(DF_data):
Enc_ohe, Enc_label = OneHotEncoder(), LabelEncoder()
DF_data["Dummies"] = Enc_label.fit_transform(DF_data["target"])
DF_dummies2 = pd.DataFrame(Enc_ohe.fit_transform(DF_data[["Dummies"]]).todense(), columns = Enc_label.classes_)
return(DF_dummies2)

%timeit pd.get_dummies(DF_data["target"])
#1000 loops, best of 3: 777 µs per loop

%timeit f1(DF_data)
#100 loops, best of 3: 2.91 ms per loop

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