The process of developing predictive models includes many stages. Most resources focus on the modeling algorithms but neglect other critical aspects of the modeling process. This book describes techniques for finding the best representations of predictors for modeling and for nding the best subset of predictors for improving model performance. A variety of example data sets are used to illustrate the techniques along with R programs for reproducing the results.

Feature engineering is a crucial step in the machine-learning pipeline, yet this topic is rarely examined on its own. With this practical book, you’ll learn techniques for extracting and transforming features—the numeric representations of raw data—into formats for machine-learning models. Each chapter guides you through a single data problem, such as how to represent text or image data. Together, these examples illustrate the main principles of feature engineering. Rather than simply teach these principles, authors Alice Zheng and Amanda Casari focus on practical application with exercises throughout the book. The closing chapter brings everything together by tackling a real-world, structured dataset with several feature-engineering techniques. Python packages including numpy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, and Matplotlib are used in code examples. You’ll examine: Feature engineering for numeric data: filtering, binning, scaling, log transforms, and power transforms Natural text techniques: bag-of-words, n-grams, and phrase detection Frequency-based filtering and feature scaling for eliminating uninformative features Encoding techniques of categorical variables, including feature hashing and bin-counting Model-based feature engineering with principal component analysis The concept of model stacking, using k-means as a featurization technique Image feature extraction with manual and deep-learning techniques

A practical guide for data scientists who want to improve the performance of any machine learning solution with feature engineering.

Extract accurate information from data to train and improve machine learning models using NumPy, SciPy, pandas, and scikit-learn libraries Key FeaturesDiscover solutions for feature generation, feature extraction, and feature selectionUncover the end-to-end feature engineering process across continuous, discrete, and unstructured datasetsImplement modern feature extraction techniques using Python's pandas, scikit-learn, SciPy and NumPy librariesBook Description Feature engineering is invaluable for developing and enriching your machine learning models. In this cookbook, you will work with the best tools to streamline your feature engineering pipelines and techniques and simplify and improve the quality of your code. Using Python libraries such as pandas, scikit-learn, Featuretools, and Feature-engine, you’ll learn how to work with both continuous and discrete datasets and be able to transform features from unstructured datasets. You will develop the skills necessary to select the best features as well as the most suitable extraction techniques. This book will cover Python recipes that will help you automate feature engineering to simplify complex processes. You’ll also get to grips with different feature engineering strategies, such as the box-cox transform, power transform, and log transform across machine learning, reinforcement learning, and natural language processing (NLP) domains. By the end of this book, you’ll have discovered tips and practical solutions to all of your feature engineering problems. What you will learnSimplify your feature engineering pipelines with powerful Python packagesGet to grips with imputing missing valuesEncode categorical variables with a wide set of techniquesExtract insights from text quickly and effortlesslyDevelop features from transactional data and time series dataDerive new features by combining existing variablesUnderstand how to transform, discretize, and scale your variablesCreate informative variables from date and timeWho this book is for This book is for machine learning professionals, AI engineers, data scientists, and NLP and reinforcement learning engineers who want to optimize and enrich their machine learning models with the best features. Knowledge of machine learning and Python coding will assist you with understanding the concepts covered in this book.

Feature engineering plays a vital role in big data analytics. Machine learning and data mining algorithms cannot work without data. Little can be achieved if there are few features to represent the underlying data objects, and the quality of results of those algorithms largely depends on the quality of the available features. Feature Engineering for Machine Learning and Data Analytics provides a comprehensive introduction to feature engineering, including feature generation, feature extraction, feature transformation, feature selection, and feature analysis and evaluation. The book presents key concepts, methods, examples, and applications, as well as chapters on feature engineering for major data types such as texts, images, sequences, time series, graphs, streaming data, software engineering data, Twitter data, and social media data. It also contains generic feature generation approaches, as well as methods for generating tried-and-tested, hand-crafted, domain-specific features. The first chapter defines the concepts of features and feature engineering, offers an overview of the book, and provides pointers to topics not covered in this book. The next six chapters are devoted to feature engineering, including feature generation for specific data types. The subsequent four chapters cover generic approaches for feature engineering, namely feature selection, feature transformation based feature engineering, deep learning based feature engineering, and pattern based feature generation and engineering. The last three chapters discuss feature engineering for social bot detection, software management, and Twitter-based applications respectively. This book can be used as a reference for data analysts, big data scientists, data preprocessing workers, project managers, project developers, prediction modelers, professors, researchers, graduate students, and upper level undergraduate students. It can also be used as the primary text for courses on feature engineering, or as a supplement for courses on machine learning, data mining, and big data analytics.

A perfect guide to speed up the predicting power of machine learning algorithms Key Features Design, discover, and create dynamic, efficient features for your machine learning application Understand your data in-depth and derive astonishing data insights with the help of this Guide Grasp powerful feature-engineering techniques and build machine learning systems Book Description Feature engineering is the most important step in creating powerful machine learning systems. This book will take you through the entire feature-engineering journey to make your machine learning much more systematic and effective. You will start with understanding your data—often the success of your ML models depends on how you leverage different feature types, such as continuous, categorical, and more, You will learn when to include a feature, when to omit it, and why, all by understanding error analysis and the acceptability of your models. You will learn to convert a problem statement into useful new features. You will learn to deliver features driven by business needs as well as mathematical insights. You'll also learn how to use machine learning on your machines, automatically learning amazing features for your data. By the end of the book, you will become proficient in Feature Selection, Feature Learning, and Feature Optimization. What you will learn Identify and leverage different feature types Clean features in data to improve predictive power Understand why and how to perform feature selection, and model error analysis Leverage domain knowledge to construct new features Deliver features based on mathematical insights Use machine-learning algorithms to construct features Master feature engineering and optimization Harness feature engineering for real world applications through a structured case study Who this book is for If you are a data science professional or a machine learning engineer looking to strengthen your predictive analytics model, then this book is a perfect guide for you. Some basic understanding of the machine learning concepts and Python scripting would be enough to get started with this book.

There is broad interest in feature extraction, construction, and selection among practitioners from statistics, pattern recognition, and data mining to machine learning. Data preprocessing is an essential step in the knowledge discovery process for real-world applications. This book compiles contributions from many leading and active researchers in this growing field and paints a picture of the state-of-art techniques that can boost the capabilities of many existing data mining tools. The objective of this collection is to increase the awareness of the data mining community about the research of feature extraction, construction and selection, which are currently conducted mainly in isolation. This book is part of our endeavor to produce a contemporary overview of modern solutions, to create synergy among these seemingly different branches, and to pave the way for developing meta-systems and novel approaches. Even with today's advanced computer technologies, discovering knowledge from data can still be fiendishly hard due to the characteristics of the computer generated data. Feature extraction, construction and selection are a set of techniques that transform and simplify data so as to make data mining tasks easier. Feature construction and selection can be viewed as two sides of the representation problem.

Applied Predictive Modeling covers the overall predictive modeling process, beginning with the crucial steps of data preprocessing, data splitting and foundations of model tuning. The text then provides intuitive explanations of numerous common and modern regression and classification techniques, always with an emphasis on illustrating and solving real data problems. The text illustrates all parts of the modeling process through many hands-on, real-life examples, and every chapter contains extensive R code for each step of the process. This multi-purpose text can be used as an introduction to predictive models and the overall modeling process, a practitioner’s reference handbook, or as a text for advanced undergraduate or graduate level predictive modeling courses. To that end, each chapter contains problem sets to help solidify the covered concepts and uses data available in the book’s R package. This text is intended for a broad audience as both an introduction to predictive models as well as a guide to applying them. Non-mathematical readers will appreciate the intuitive explanations of the techniques while an emphasis on problem-solving with real data across a wide variety of applications will aid practitioners who wish to extend their expertise. Readers should have knowledge of basic statistical ideas, such as correlation and linear regression analysis. While the text is biased against complex equations, a mathematical background is needed for advanced topics.

As computer power grows and data collection technologies advance, a plethora of data is generated in almost every field where computers are used. The com puter generated data should be analyzed by computers; without the aid of computing technologies, it is certain that huge amounts of data collected will not ever be examined, let alone be used to our advantages. Even with today's advanced computer technologies (e. g. , machine learning and data mining sys tems), discovering knowledge from data can still be fiendishly hard due to the characteristics of the computer generated data. Taking its simplest form, raw data are represented in feature-values. The size of a dataset can be measUJ·ed in two dimensions, number of features (N) and number of instances (P). Both Nand P can be enormously large. This enormity may cause serious problems to many data mining systems. Feature selection is one of the long existing methods that deal with these problems. Its objective is to select a minimal subset of features according to some reasonable criteria so that the original task can be achieved equally well, if not better. By choosing a minimal subset offeatures, irrelevant and redundant features are removed according to the criterion. When N is reduced, the data space shrinks and in a sense, the data set is now a better representative of the whole data population. If necessary, the reduction of N can also give rise to the reduction of P by eliminating duplicates.

Machine learning has become an integral part of many commercial applications and research projects, but this field is not exclusive to large companies with extensive research teams. If you use Python, even as a beginner, this book will teach you practical ways to build your own machine learning solutions. With all the data available today, machine learning applications are limited only by your imagination. You’ll learn the steps necessary to create a successful machine-learning application with Python and the scikit-learn library. Authors Andreas Müller and Sarah Guido focus on the practical aspects of using machine learning algorithms, rather than the math behind them. Familiarity with the NumPy and matplotlib libraries will help you get even more from this book. With this book, you’ll learn: Fundamental concepts and applications of machine learning Advantages and shortcomings of widely used machine learning algorithms How to represent data processed by machine learning, including which data aspects to focus on Advanced methods for model evaluation and parameter tuning The concept of pipelines for chaining models and encapsulating your workflow Methods for working with text data, including text-specific processing techniques Suggestions for improving your machine learning and data science skills