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Demystifying Feature Engineering for Machine Learning

By Sachin Andhare

What is Feature Engineering FE is the process of applying domain knowledge to extract analytical representations from raw data, making it ready for machine learning. It involves the application of business knowledge, mathematics, and statistics to transform data into a format that can be directly consumed by machine learning models. It starts from many tables spread across disparate databases that are then joined, aggregated, and combined into a single flat table using statistical transformations and/or relational operations. Let’s say you are addressing a complex business problem such as predicting customer churn or forecasting product demand using applied machine learning. Assuming a team is in place and the business case identified, where do you start? The first step is to collect the relevant data to train the machine learning (ML) algorithms. This is usually followed by the selection of the appropriate algorithm or ensemble of algorithms. Choosing the right algorithm depends…

A Vision of Rapid, High-Quality Data Analysis for All Businesses

By dotData

Leveraging Data to be Competitive It is becoming increasingly important for enterprises to leverage data to be competitive. Yet, there are three challenges related to embracing data utilization that all businesses share: it takes time,advanced skills, andexpertise. Together, these challenges make it difficult for enterprises to fully leverage their data for business growth.  Data analytics is not simply prediction by machine learning. Rather, it is a process involving many different steps, including: data preparation,feature engineering,machine learning,visualization, andmodel operationalization. Until now, completing this process for just a single project would have taken months. Moreover, a wide variety of highly-skilled personnel are needed for each step – such as domain experts, data scientists, data engineers, and BI engineers.  Additionally, processes and outcomes have tended to be highly dependent on the experience and intuition of each individual. Feature Engineering Made Easy For feature engineering in particular, it has long been thought that this…