Book Image

Python Machine Learning - Third Edition

By : Sebastian Raschka, Vahid Mirjalili
5 (2)
Book Image

Python Machine Learning - Third Edition

5 (2)
By: Sebastian Raschka, Vahid Mirjalili

Overview of this book

Python Machine Learning, Third Edition is a comprehensive guide to machine learning and deep learning with Python. It acts as both a step-by-step tutorial, and a reference you'll keep coming back to as you build your machine learning systems. Packed with clear explanations, visualizations, and working examples, the book covers all the essential machine learning techniques in depth. While some books teach you only to follow instructions, with this machine learning book, Raschka and Mirjalili teach the principles behind machine learning, allowing you to build models and applications for yourself. Updated for TensorFlow 2.0, this new third edition introduces readers to its new Keras API features, as well as the latest additions to scikit-learn. It's also expanded to cover cutting-edge reinforcement learning techniques based on deep learning, as well as an introduction to GANs. Finally, this book also explores a subfield of natural language processing (NLP) called sentiment analysis, helping you learn how to use machine learning algorithms to classify documents. This book is your companion to machine learning with Python, whether you're a Python developer new to machine learning or want to deepen your knowledge of the latest developments.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
20
Index

Dealing with missing data

It is not uncommon in real-world applications for our training examples to be missing one or more values for various reasons. There could have been an error in the data collection process, certain measurements may not be applicable, or particular fields could have been simply left blank in a survey, for example. We typically see missing values as blank spaces in our data table or as placeholder strings such as NaN, which stands for "not a number," or NULL (a commonly used indicator of unknown values in relational databases). Unfortunately, most computational tools are unable to handle such missing values or will produce unpredictable results if we simply ignore them. Therefore, it is crucial that we take care of those missing values before we proceed with further analyses.

In this section, we will work through several practical techniques for dealing with missing values by removing entries from our dataset or imputing missing values from other...