What is Feature Vector?

Feature vector in pattern recognition and machine learning is an n-dimensional vector of numerical features that represent some object. Many algorithms in machine learning require a numerical representation of objects since such representations facilitate processing and statistical analysis. When representing images, the feature values might correspond to the pixels of an image, when representing texts perhaps term occurrence frequencies. Feature vectors are equivalent to the vectors of explanatory variables used in statistical procedures such as linear regression. Feature vectors are often combined with weights using a dot product in order to construct a linear predictor function that is used to determine a score for making a prediction. The vector space associated with these vectors is often called the feature space. Higher-level features can be obtained from already available features and added to the feature vector. This process is referred to as feature construction. Feature construction is the application of a set of constructive operators to a set of existing features resulting in construction of new features. Examples of such constructive operators include checking for the equality conditions {=, ≠}, the arithmetic operators {+,−,×, /}, the array operators {max(S), min(S), average(S)} as well as other more sophisticated operators.

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