The Engineers Guide to Machine Learning: Data processing | Data Types

The four main types of data you will see as a machine learning engineer

Introduction

Wow, what a crazy couple of months. I’ve started a new job as this change has understandably taken up a huge part of my time! Luckily things have quieted down a bit and I can start back with my writing. So, let's jump right in!

Data processing: Data Types

Machine learning/Deep Learning/AI are fancy number crunchers and they can have some amazing results given good data, however, the first step is to properly understand your data so you can make informed decisions about what algorithms and data cleaning methods to use. One of the first things in understanding your data is to know what kind of data you have! Here are the 4 most common types of data that you will come across.

Nominal data

Nominal data is the least informative of the four data types. These are variables with no inherent order or ranking sequence. “Nominal” scales could simply be called labels. All nominal scales are mutually exclusive and none of them have any numerical significance. An easy way to remember is that the “Nominal” sounds a lot like “name” and all nominal…