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Data Cleaning and Feature Engineering Guide

The document discusses the importance of data cleaning and feature engineering in machine learning, highlighting that real-world data is often messy and requires handling missing values for better model accuracy. It outlines methods for addressing missing values, such as removing rows or features, and replacing them with statistics like mean or median. Additionally, it covers feature engineering techniques, including one-hot encoding, binning, and feature scaling, to transform raw data into usable features that enhance predictive power.

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Zahir Seid
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6 views10 pages

Data Cleaning and Feature Engineering Guide

The document discusses the importance of data cleaning and feature engineering in machine learning, highlighting that real-world data is often messy and requires handling missing values for better model accuracy. It outlines methods for addressing missing values, such as removing rows or features, and replacing them with statistics like mean or median. Additionally, it covers feature engineering techniques, including one-hot encoding, binning, and feature scaling, to transform raw data into usable features that enhance predictive power.

Uploaded by

Zahir Seid
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Data Cleaning & Feature

Engineering
Data Cleaning

● Real-world data is often incomplete or messy


● Machine Learning models cannot handle
missing values
● Data cleaning ensures:
● Better accuracy
● Reliable predictions
● Smooth model training

2
Missing Values Problem
● Missing values occur due to:
● Data collection errors
● Incomplete records
● Corrupted data
● Example: missing values in numerical features
● Must be handled before training the model

3
Methods to Handle Missing Values
● Three Common Approaches:
● Remove rows with missing values
● Remove the entire feature
● Replace missing values with a statistic
● Mean
● Median
● Zero

4
When to Use Which Method
● Remove rows
● Very few missing values

● Large dataset

● Remove feature
● Feature is not important

● Too many missing values

● Replace values (Median)


● Feature is important

● Want to keep all data

● Median is robust to outliers

5
Feature Engineering
● Feature Engineering = transforming raw data into usable
features
● ML models cannot learn directly from raw logs or text
● Dataset consists of:
● Features (x) → inputs
● Labels (y) → outputs
● Goal: create informative features with high predictive power
● Requires creativity + domain knowledge

6
Examples of Feature Engineering
● From user interaction logs, we can create:
● Subscription price
● Login frequency (daily / weekly)
● Average session duration
● Response time
● Anything measurable can be a feature
● Good features → better predictions, lower
model bias
7
One-Hot Encoding (Categorical Features)
● Some models only work with numerical data
● Categorical values (e.g., colors, days) must be
converted
● One-Hot Encoding:
● Each category → separate binary feature
● Avoid assigning numbers like 1, 2, 3 when order
is meaningless
● Prevents false ordering and overfitting
8
Binning (Numerical → Categorical)
● Converts continuous values into ranges (bins)
● Example: age groups instead of exact age
● Helps when:
● Exact value is less important than the
range
● Dataset is small
● Gives the model a useful hint, reduces
complexity
9
Feature Scaling
● Normalization
● Scales values into a fixed range (e.g., 0 to 1)
● Useful when feature ranges differ greatly
● Standardization
● Rescales features to:
● Mean = 0

● Standard deviation = 1

● Preferred when:
● Data is normally distributed
● Outliers exist
● Unsupervised learning is used

10

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