title: converting mixed data to categorical: dataframe
body: <p>I have a column(actually couple of columns) that have mixed kind of data: categorical and numerical data(correspond to different category). However, they should just be categorical in nature. My final goal is to give them a one-hot-encoding representation. </p>
  
  <p>The numerical values are mostly zeros in the column. I want to convert this column to categorical. Since I don't know a direct way(mixed to one-hot-encoding) of converting using <code>get_dummies()</code>. Therefore, I first converted to numerical completely, then converted to one-hot-encoding.</p>
  
  <p>The image below represents my scenario.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7jmM.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7jmM.png" alt="mixed_column"></a></p>
  
  <p>Is there a better approach? Is there a way to directly convert the data to categorical.</p>
  
  <p>Any help is appreciated.</p>