What does "feature engineering" involve?

Feature engineering is a critical process in data analytics and machine learning that focuses on transforming raw data into a format that is suitable for modeling. This involves extracting relevant features from the data, which means identifying and selecting the most informative attributes that contribute to the predictive power of a model.

In this context, "relevant features" refer to the elements of the data that provide meaningful information for building models, such as patterns and insights that can help predict outcomes effectively. This process can also entail creating new features through mathematical transformations, combining existing features, or encoding categorical variables into numerical formats.

Effective feature engineering can significantly enhance the performance of machine learning algorithms by ensuring that the model has access to the most pertinent information, ultimately leading to more accurate predictions and insights.