Inconsistent column references with columntransformer for text/numeric cols

Description

A small two column dataset with a text column and a numeric column requires inconsistent list notation usage.

I found it raised here but I found the errors quite confusing even once I solved the issue.

Steps/Code to Reproduce

import pandas as pd
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.preprocessing import Normalizer
from sklearn.compose import ColumnTransformer

dataset = pd.DataFrame({"a":["word gone wild","gone with wind"],
                        "c":[1,2]})

clmn = ColumnTransformer([
    ("tfidf", TfidfVectorizer(min_df=0), "a"),
    ("norm", Normalizer(norm='l1'), "c") #errors
    #("norm", Normalizer(norm='l1'), ["c"]) #code executes as expected
])
clmn.fit_transform(dataset)

#### Expected Results
```python
array([[0.44943642, 0.6316672 , 0.        , 0.        , 0.6316672 ,
        1.        ],
       [0.44943642, 0.        , 0.6316672 , 0.6316672 , 0.        ,
        1.        ]])

Actual Results

ValueError: 1D data passed to a transformer that expects 2D data. Try to specify the column selection as a list of one item instead of a scalar.

Versions

System: python: 3.6.8 |Anaconda, Inc.| (default, Feb 21 2019, 18:30:04) [MSC v.1916 64 bit (AMD64)] executable: C:\Users\evanmiller\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\capco\python.exe machine: Windows-10-10.0.16299-SP0

BLAS: macros: lib_dirs: cblas_libs: cblas

Python deps: pip: 19.1.1 setuptools: 41.0.1 sklearn: 0.20.3 numpy: 1.16.4 scipy: 1.3.0 Cython: None pandas: 0.24.2

I was wondering if there was any explanation as to why this might happen? The single text column must have no [/] around it, while the other column requires it.

If I understood more about why it’s happening I’d be happy to write a more informative error message if you think that’s the right call.

Evan

[jnothman]

FMost Scikit-learn estimators expect each sample to be represented as a numeric vector, i.e. a set of columns from a DataFrame. Vectorizers are the exception, where a sample is represented by a string of text (or a filename).

[jnothman]

I’m not convinced that you need to build such a sophisticated example, just try to write some prose to guide the users.