This course introduces programming techniques to craft and feature engineer meaningful inputs to improve predictive modeling performance. In addition, this course provides strategies to preemptively spot and avoid common pitfalls that compromise the integrity of the data being used to build a predictive model. This course relies heavily on SAS programming techniques to accomplish the desired objectives.
The self-study e-learning includes:
- Annotatable course notes in PDF format.
- Virtual Lab time to practice.
Learn How To
Extract data from a relational data table structure. Define population qualifications and create a target sample. Use feature engineering techniques to transform transactional data into meaningful inputs into a predictive model. Transform low-, mid-, and high-cardinality categorical input variables into meaningful predictive modeling inputs. Use ZIP codes and latitude/longitude points to calculate great-circle distance, driving distance, and estimated driving time. Use Bayes' theorem to estimate meaningful predictive modeling inputs, impute missing observations, and partition the target sample into training and validation data sets for honest assessment of the predictive model.Who Should Attend
Analysts, data scientists, and IT professionals looking to craft better inputs to improve predictive modeling performance
Prerequisites
This course assumes some experience in both predictive modeling and SAS programming. Before attending this course, you should have:;
Exposure to DATA step programming equivalent to the SAS Programming 1: Essentials course. Exposure to programming in SQL or the SQL procedure. Exposure to querying data in PROC SQL and building and deploying a predictive model. Familiarity with the analytical process of building predictive models and scoring new data.;Familiarity with the SAS macro language is helpful but not required.SAS Products Covered
Base SAS;SAS/STAT
Course Outline
Extracting Relevant Data
Data difficulties. Assessing available data. Accessing available data. Drawing a representative target sample. Drawing an uncontaminated input sample.Transforming Transaction and Event DataAdvantages and disadvantages of transactions data.Common transaction structures. Defining the time horizon. Fixed and variable time horizon methods. Implementing common transaction transformations.Using Nonnumeric DataDefinitions and difficulties of nonnumeric data. Miscoding and multicoding detection. Controlling degrees of freedom. Geocoding.Managing Data PathologiesExploring input variable distributions. Detecting data anomalies. Creating custom exploratory tools for candidate input variables. Missing value imputation. Data partitioning.
