Discretization of continuous features
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In statistics and machine learning, discretization refers to the process of converting continuous features or variables to discretized or nominal features. This can be useful when creating probability mass functions – formally, in density estimation. It is a form of binning, as in making a histogram.
Typically data is discretized into partitions of K equal lengths (equal intervals) or K% of the total data (equal frequencies).[1]
Some mechanisms for discretizing continuous data include:
- Fayyad & Irani's MDL method [2] - Uses Information Gain to recursively define the best bins.
- And many more [3]
See also
References
- ^ "Entropy and MDL Discretization of Continuous Variables for Bayesian Belief Networks" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-07-10.
- ^ "Multi-Interval Discretization of Continuous-Valued Attributes for Classification Learning". Retrieved 2008-07-10.
- ^ "Supervised and Unsupervised Discretization of Continuous Features". Retrieved 2008-07-10.