Python Machine Learning By Example - Second Edition

Best practice 1 – completely understanding the project goal

Before starting to collect data, we should make sure that the goal of the project and the business problem, is completely understood, as this will guide us on what data sources to look into, and where sufficient domain knowledge and expertise is also required. For example, in the previous chapter, Chapter 9, Stock Price Prediction with Regression Algorithms, our goal was to predict the future prices of the DJIA index, so we first collected data of its past performance, instead of past performance of an irrelevant European stock. In Chapter 6, Predicting Online Ads Click-through with Tree-Based Algorithms, and Chapter 7, Predicting Online Ads Click-through with Logistic Regression, ...