Turning a column to months into number equivalent

Hey everyone!

I came across a data set with 8631 rows and 19 cloumns to use as the training set for a prediction model using neural networking. One of the columns is filled with months in short versions (Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr,..., Dec). What would be the most efficient way of converting this into their numerical equivalent for me to put into the model? Just need to convert this one column, will using grp2idx work expiecially when I put in the test data set for the actual prediction? Thanks in advanced!

Answer 1

[KSSV]

Read about findgroups. https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/findgroups.html

a = {'Apr', 'Jan','Feb', 'Apr', 'Jan'} ;
iwant = findgroups(a) ;