Feature Scaling is NOT Always Necessary

Here's when it is not needed.

Feature scaling is commonly used to improve the performance and stability of ML models.

This is because it scales the data to a standard range. This prevents a specific feature from having a strong influence on the model’s output.

Different scales of columns

For instance, in the image above, the scale of Income could massively impact the overall prediction. Scaling both features to the same range can mitigate this and improve the model’s performance.

But is it always necessary?

While feature scaling is often crucial, knowing when to do it is also equally important.

Note that many ML algorithms are unaffected by scale. This is evident from the image below.

As shown above:

• Logistic regression, SVM Classifier, MLP, and kNN do better with feature scaling.

• Decision trees, Random forests, Naive bayes, and Gradient boosting are unaffected.

Consider a decision tree, for instance. It splits the data based on thresholds determined solely by the feature values, regardless of their scale.

Decision tree

Thus, it’s important to understand the nature of your data and the algorithm you intend to use.

You may never need feature scaling if the algorithm is insensitive to the scale of the data.

👉 Over to you: What other algorithms typically work well without scaling data? Let me know :)

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