What is Feature Engineering?

Feature Engineering is the process of creating new features or

transforming existing features to improve the performance of a
machine-learning model. It involves selecting relevant
information from raw data and transforming it into a format that
can be easily understood by a model. The goal is to improve
model accuracy by providing more meaningful and relevant
information.

What is Feature Engineering?

Feature engineering is the process of transforming raw data into
features that are suitable for machine learning models. In other
words, it is the process of selecting, extracting, and transforming
the most relevant features from the available data to build more
accurate and efficient machine learning models.
The success of machine learning models heavily depends on the
quality of the features used to train them. Feature engineering
involves a set of techniques that enable us to create new
features by combining or transforming the existing ones. These
techniques help to highlight the most important patterns and
relationships in the data, which in turn helps the machine
learning model to learn from the data more effectively.

What is a Feature?
In the context of machine learning, a feature (also known as a
variable or attribute) is an individual measurable property or
characteristic of a data point that is used as input for a machine
learning algorithm. Features can be numerical, categorical, or
text-based, and they represent different aspects of the data that
are relevant to the problem at hand.
For example, in a dataset of housing prices, features could
include the number of bedrooms, the square footage, the
location, and the age of the property. In a dataset of customer
demographics, features could include age, gender, income level,
and occupation.
The choice and quality of features are critical in machine
learning, as they can greatly impact the accuracy and
performance of the model.
Need for Feature Engineering in Machine Learning?
We engineer features for various reasons, and some of the main
reasons include:
Improve User Experience: The primary reason we engineer
features is to enhance the user experience of a product or
service. By adding new features, we can make the product more
intuitive, efficient, and user-friendly, which can increase user
satisfaction and engagement.
Competitive Advantage: Another reason we engineer features is
to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. By offering
unique and innovative features, we can differentiate our product
from competitors and attract more customers.
Meet Customer Needs: We engineer features to meet the
evolving needs of customers. By analyzing user feedback,
market trends, and customer behavior, we can identify areas
where new features could enhance the product’s value and meet
customer needs.
Increase Revenue: Features can also be engineered to generate
more revenue. For example, a new feature that streamlines the
checkout process can increase sales, or a feature that provides
additional functionality could lead to more upsells or cross-sells.
Future-Proofing: Engineering features can also be done to future-
proof a product or service. By anticipating future trends and
potential customer needs, we can develop features that ensure
the product remains relevant and useful in the long term.
Processes Involved in Feature Engineering
Feature engineering in Machine learning consists of mainly 5
processes: Feature Creation, Feature Transformation, Feature
Extraction, Feature Selection, and Feature Scaling. It is an
iterative process that requires experimentation and testing to
find the best combination of features for a given problem. The
success of a machine learning model largely depends on the
quality of the features used in the model.
1. Feature Creation
Feature Creation is the process of generating new features based
on domain knowledge or by observing patterns in the data. It is a
form of feature engineering that can significantly improve the
performance of a machine-learning model.
Types of Feature Creation:
Domain-Specific: Creating new features based on domain
knowledge, such as creating features based on business rules or
industry standards.
Data-Driven: Creating new features by observing patterns in the
data, such as calculating aggregations or creating interaction
features.
Synthetic: Generating new features by combining existing
features or synthesizing new data points.
Why Feature Creation?
Improves Model Performance: By providing additional and more
relevant information to the model, feature creation can increase
the accuracy and precision of the model.
Increases Model Robustness: By adding additional features, the
model can become more robust to outliers and other anomalies.
Improves Model Interpretability: By creating new features, it can
be easier to understand the model’s predictions.
Increases Model Flexibility: By adding new features, the model
can be made more flexible to handle different types of data.
2. Feature Transformation
Feature Transformation is the process of transforming the
features into a more suitable representation for the machine
learning model. This is done to ensure that the model can
effectively learn from the data.
Types of Feature Transformation:
Normalization: Rescaling the features to have a similar range,
such as between 0 and 1, to prevent some features from
dominating others.
Scaling: Scaling is a technique used to transform numerical
variables to have a similar scale, so that they can be compared
more easily. Rescaling the features to have a similar scale, such
as having a standard deviation of 1, to make sure the model
considers all features equally.
Encoding: Transforming categorical features into a numerical
representation. Examples are one-hot encoding and label
encoding.
Transformation: Transforming the features using mathematical
operations to change the distribution or scale of the features.
Examples are logarithmic, square root, and reciprocal
transformations.
Why Feature Transformation?
Improves Model Performance: By transforming the features into
a more suitable representation, the model can learn more
meaningful patterns in the data.
Increases Model Robustness: Transforming the features can
make the model more robust to outliers and other anomalies.
Improves Computational Efficiency: The transformed features
often require fewer computational resources.
Improves Model Interpretability: By transforming the features, it
can be easier to understand the model’s predictions.
3. Feature Extraction
Feature Extraction is the process of creating new features from
existing ones to provide more relevant information to the
machine learning model. This is done by transforming,
combining, or aggregating existing features.
Types of Feature Extraction:
Dimensionality Reduction: Reducing the number of features by
transforming the data into a lower-dimensional space while
retaining important information. Examples are PCA and t-SNE.
Feature Combination: Combining two or more existing features
to create a new one. For example, the interaction between two
features.
Feature Aggregation: Aggregating features to create a new one.
For example, calculating the mean, sum, or count of a set of
features.
Feature Transformation: Transforming existing features into a
new representation. For example, log transformation of a feature
with a skewed distribution.
Why Feature Extraction?
Improves Model Performance: By creating new and more
relevant features, the model can learn more meaningful patterns
in the data.
Reduces Overfitting: By reducing the dimensionality of the data,
the model is less likely to overfit the training data.
Improves Computational Efficiency: The transformed features
often require fewer computational resources.
Improves Model Interpretability: By creating new features, it can
be easier to understand the model’s predictions.
4. Feature Selection
Feature Selection is the process of selecting a subset of relevant
features from the dataset to be used in a machine-learning
model. It is an important step in the feature engineering process
as it can have a significant impact on the model’s performance.
Types of Feature Selection:
Filter Method: Based on the statistical measure of the
relationship between the feature and the target variable.
Features with a high correlation are selected.
Wrapper Method: Based on the evaluation of the feature subset
using a specific machine learning algorithm. The feature subset
that results in the best performance is selected.
Embedded Method: Based on the feature selection as part of the
training process of the machine learning algorithm.
Why Feature Selection?
Reduces Overfitting: By using only the most relevant features,
the model can generalize better to new data.
Improves Model Performance: Selecting the right features can
improve the accuracy, precision, and recall of the model.
Decreases Computational Costs: A smaller number of features
requires less computation and storage resources.
Improves Interpretability: By reducing the number of features, it
is easier to understand and interpret the results of the model.
5. Feature Scaling
Feature Scaling is the process of transforming the features so
that they have a similar scale. This is important in machine
learning because the scale of the features can affect the
performance of the model.
Types of Feature Scaling:
Min-Max Scaling: Rescaling the features to a specific range, such
as between 0 and 1, by subtracting the minimum value and
dividing by the range.
Standard Scaling: Rescaling the features to have a mean of 0
and a standard deviation of 1 by subtracting the mean and
dividing by the standard deviation.
Robust Scaling: Rescaling the features to be robust to outliers by
dividing them by the interquartile range.
Why Feature Scaling?
Improves Model Performance: By transforming the features to
have a similar scale, the model can learn from all features
equally and avoid being dominated by a few large features.
Increases Model Robustness: By transforming the features to be
robust to outliers, the model can become more robust to
anomalies.
Improves Computational Efficiency: Many machine learning
algorithms, such as k-nearest neighbors, are sensitive to the
scale of the features and perform better with scaled features.
Improves Model Interpretability: By transforming the features to
have a similar scale, it can be easier to understand the model’s
predictions.
What are the Steps in Feature Engineering?
The steps for feature engineering vary per different Ml engineers
and data scientists. Some of the common steps that are involved
in most machine-learning algorithms are:
Data Cleansing
Data cleansing (also known as data cleaning or data scrubbing)
involves identifying and removing or correcting any errors or
inconsistencies in the dataset. This step is important to ensure
that the data is accurate and reliable.
Data Transformation
Feature Extraction
Feature Selection
Feature selection involves selecting the most relevant features
from the dataset for use in machine learning. This can include
techniques like correlation analysis, mutual information, and
stepwise regression.
Feature Iteration
Feature iteration involves refining and improving the features
based on the performance of the machine learning model. This
can include techniques like adding new features, removing
redundant features and transforming features in different ways.
Overall, the goal of feature engineering is to create a set of
informative and relevant features that can be used to train a
machine learning model and improve its accuracy and
performance. The specific steps involved in the process may
vary depending on the type of data and the specific machine-
learning problem at hand.
Techniques Used in Feature Engineering
Feature engineering is the process of transforming raw data into
features that are suitable for machine learning models. There are
various techniques that can be used in feature engineering to
create new features by combining or transforming the existing
ones. The following are some of the commonly used feature
engineering techniques:
One-Hot Encoding
One-hot encoding is a technique used to transform categorical
variables into numerical values that can be used by machine
learning models. In this technique, each category is transformed
into a binary value indicating its presence or absence. For
example, consider a categorical variable “Colour” with three
categories: Red, Green, and Blue. One-hot encoding would
transform this variable into three binary variables: Colour_Red,
Colour_Green, and Colour_Blue, where the value of each variable
would be 1 if the corresponding category is present and 0
otherwise.
Binning
Binning is a technique used to transform continuous variables
into categorical variables. In this technique, the range of values
of the continuous variable is divided into several bins, and each
bin is assigned a categorical value. For example, consider a
continuous variable “Age” with values ranging from 18 to 80.
Binning would divide this variable into several age groups such
as 18-25, 26-35, 36-50, and 51-80, and assign a categorical
value to each age group.
Scaling
The most common scaling techniques are standardization and
normalization. Standardization scales the variable so that it has
zero mean and unit variance. Normalization scales the variable
so that it has a range of values between 0 and 1.
Feature Split
Feature splitting is a powerful technique used in feature
engineering to improve the performance of machine learning
models. It involves dividing single features into multiple sub-
features or groups based on specific criteria. This process
unlocks valuable insights and enhances the model’s ability to
capture complex relationships and patterns within the data.
Text Data Preprocessing
Text data requires special preprocessing techniques before it can
be used by machine learning models. Text preprocessing
involves removing stop words, stemming, lemmatization, and
vectorization. Stop words are common words that do not add
much meaning to the text, such as “the” and “and”. Stemming
involves reducing words to their root form, such as converting
“running” to “run”. Lemmatization is similar to stemming, but it
reduces words to their base form, such as converting “running”
to “run”. Vectorization involves transforming text data into
numerical vectors that can be used by machine learning models.
Feature Engineering Tools
There are several tools available for feature engineering. Here
are some popular ones:
1. Featuretools
Featuretools is a Python library that enables automatic feature
engineering for structured data. It can extract features from
multiple tables, including relational databases and CSV files, and
generate new features based on user-defined primitives. Some of
its features include:
Automated feature engineering using machine learning
algorithms.
Support for handling time-dependent data.
Integration with popular Python libraries, such as pandas and
scikit-learn.
Visualization tools for exploring and analyzing the generated
features.
Extensive documentation and tutorials for getting started.
2. TPOT
TPOT (Tree-based Pipeline Optimization Tool) is an automated
machine learning tool that includes feature engineering as one of
its components. It uses genetic programming to search for the
best combination of features and machine learning algorithms
for a given dataset. Some of its features include:
Automatic feature selection and transformation.
Support for multiple types of machine learning models, including
regression, classification, and clustering.
Ability to handle missing data and categorical variables.
Integration with popular Python libraries, such as scikit-learn and
pandas.
Interactive visualization of the generated pipelines.
3. DataRobot
DataRobot is a machine learning automation platform that
includes feature engineering as one of its capabilities. It uses
automated machine learning techniques to generate new
features and select the best combination of features and models
for a given dataset. Some of its features include:
Automatic feature engineering using machine learning
algorithms.
Support for handling time-dependent and text data.
Integration with popular Python libraries, such as pandas and
scikit-learn.
Interactive visualization of the generated models and features.
Collaboration tools for teams working on machine learning
projects.
4. Alteryx
Alteryx is a data preparation and automation tool that includes
feature engineering as one of its features. It provides a visual
interface for creating data pipelines that can extract, transform,
and generate features from multiple data sources. Some of its
features include:
Support for handling structured and unstructured data.
Integration with popular data sources, such as Excel and
databases.
Pre-built tools for feature extraction and transformation.
Support for custom scripting and code integration.
Collaboration and sharing tools for teams working on data
projects.
5. H2O.ai
H2O.ai is an open-source machine learning platform that
includes feature engineering as one of its capabilities. It provides
a range of automated feature engineering techniques, such as
feature scaling, imputation, and

encoding, as well as manual feature engineering capabilities for

more advanced users. Some of its features include:
Automatic and manual feature engineering options.
Support for structured and unstructured data, including text and
image data.
Integration with popular data sources, such as CSV files and
databases.
Interactive visualization of the generated features and models.
Collaboration and sharing tools for teams working on machine
learning projects.
Overall, these tools can help streamline and automate the
feature engineering process
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