Feature Engineering
Definition
Feature engineering is the process of transforming raw data into features that better represent the underlying problem to predictive models.
This involves selecting, manipulating, and creating variables from existing data to improve the accuracy and performance of machine learning algorithms. The goal is to make the patterns in the data more apparent and accessible to models, leading to more insightful results.
For instance, instead of using a person's birth date directly, one might engineer features such as 'age' or 'day of the week of birth' to capture more relevant information.
This practice is fundamental in machine learning, data mining, and statistical modeling.