Choose the right encoding for each categorical column based on cardinality, model, and leakage risk.
## CONTEXT Encoding categoricals wrong wrecks models quietly: one-hot encoding a thousand-category column explodes dimensionality, ordinal encoding implies false order, and target encoding leaks the label unless cross-fitted. The right choice depends on cardinality, the model type, and the leakage risk. As of 2026,…
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