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Foundations of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Licence
OPEN CC-BY-4.0
Authors
Nidhi Sharma, Honey Singh, Ajay Sharma, Deepak Dagar
Published
2026-07-28 · Zenodo
Language
eng
Length
37166 words
Type
narrative text
Open ↗ Download Open original ↗
Data Normalization

Normalization scales numerical values into a smaller and consistent range. In many datasets, variables may differ greatly in scale. For example:

  • salary values may range in thousands

  • age values may range between 20 and 60 If large-scale variables dominate calculations, machine learning algorithms may behave inefficiently. Normalization helps balance feature values and improves learning stability. Standardization Standardization transforms data so that:

  • the mean becomes zero

  • the standard deviation becomes one This method is commonly used in Machine Learning because many algorithms perform better when features follow standardized distributions. Standardization improves:

  • training stability

  • optimization efficiency

  • model convergence It is especially important in algorithms involving distance calculations or gradient optimization. Encoding Categorical Data Machine Learning algorithms generally work with numerical values, but many real-world datasets contain categorical information. Examples include:

  • gender

  • city names

  • product categories

  • educational qualifications Such textual information must be converted into numerical forms before model training. This conversion process is called encoding. Label Encoding and One-Hot Encoding Two common encoding methods are:

  • Label Encoding

  • One-Hot Encoding