Version 1.3.X#

Version 1.3.0#

Deployed: 5th May 2022

Contributors#

In this release, we add the get_feature_names_out functionality to all our transformers! You asked for it, we delivered :)

In addition, we introduce a new module for time series forecasting. This module will host transformers that create features suitable for, well…, time series forecasting. We created three new transformers: LagFeatures, WindowFeatures and ExpandingWindowFeatures. We had the extraordinary support from Kishan Manani who is an experienced forecaster, and Morgan Sell who helped us draft the new classes. Thank you both for the incredible work!

We also improved the functionality of our feature creation classes. To do this, we are deprecating our former classes, MathematicalCombination and CombineWithFeatureReference, which are a bit of a mouthful, for the new classes MathFeatures and RelativeFeatures.

We are also renaming the class CyclicalTransformer to CyclicalFeatures.

We’ve also enhanced the functionality of the SelectByTargetMeanPerformance and SklearnTransformerWrapper.

In addition, we’ve had some bug reports and bug fixes that we list below, and a number of enhancements to our current classes.

Thank you so much to all contributors to this release for making this massive release possible!

New modules#

  • timeseries-forecasting: this module hosts transformers that create features suitable for time series forecasting (Morgan Sell, Kishan Manani and Soledad Galli)
    • LagFeatures

    • WindowFeatures

    • ExpandingWindowFeatures

New transformers#

New functionality#

Enhancements#

  • All our feature selection transformers can now check that the variables were not dropped in a previous selection step (Gilles Verbockhaven)

  • The DecisionTreeDiscretiser and the DecisionTreeEncoder now check that the user enters a target suitable for regression or classification (Morgan Sell)

  • The DecisionTreeDiscretiser and the DecisionTreeEncoder now accept all sklearn cross-validation constructors (Soledad Galli)

  • The SklearnTransformerWrapper now implements the method inverse_transform (Soledad Galli)

  • The SklearnTransformerWrapper now supports additional transformers, for example, PolynomialFeatures (Soledad Galli)

  • The CategoricalImputer() now let’s you know which variables have more than one mode (Soledad Galli)

  • The DatetimeFeatures() now can extract features from the dataframe index (Edoardo Argiolas)

  • Transformers that take y now check that X and y match (Noah Green and Ben Reiniger)

Bug fixes#

  • The SklearnTransformerWrapper now works with cross-validation when using the one hot encoder (Noah Green)

  • The SelectByShuffling now evaluates the initial performance and the performance after shuffling in the same data parts (Gilles Verbockhaven)

  • Discretisers: when setting return_boundaries=True the interval limits are now returned as strings and the variables as object data type (Soledad Galli)

  • DecisionTreeEncoder now enforces passing y to fit() (Soledad Galli)

  • DropMissingData can now take a string in the variables parameter (Soledad Galli)

  • DropFeatures now accepts a string as input of the features_to_drop parameter (Noah Green)

  • Categorical encoders now work correctly with numpy arrays as inputs (Noah Green and Ben Reiniger)

Documentation#

  • Improved user guide for SelectByTargetMeanPerformance with lots of tips for troubleshooting (Soledad Galli)

  • Added guides on how to use MathFeatures and RelativeFeatures (Soledad Galli)

  • Expanded user guide on how to use CyclicalFeatures with explanation and demos of what these features are (Soledad Galli)

  • Added a Jupyter notebook with a demo of the CyclicalFeatures class (Soledad Galli)

  • We now display all available methods in the documentation methods summary (Soledad Galli)

  • Fixes typo in ArbitraryNumberImputer documentation (Tim Vink)

Deprecations#

  • We are deprecating MathematicalCombination, CombineWithFeatureReference and CyclicalTransformer in version 1.3 and they will be removed in version 1.4

  • Feature-engine does not longer work with Python 3.6 due to dependence on latest versions of Scikit-learn

  • In MatchColumns the attribute input_features_ was replaced by feature_names_in_ to adopt Scikit-learn convention

Code improvements#

  • Imputers: removed looping over every variable to replace NaN. Now passing imputer dictionary to pd.fillna() (Soledad Galli)

  • AddMissingIndicators: removed looping over every variable to add missing indicators. Now using pd.isna() (Soledad Galli)

  • CategoricalImputer now captures all modes in one go, without looping over variables (Soledad Galli)

  • Removed workaround to import docstrings for transform() method in various transformers (Soledad Galli)

For developers#

  • Created functions and docstrings for common descriptions of methods and attributes (Soledad Galli)

  • We introduce the use of common tests that are applied to all transformers (Soledad Galli)

Experimental#

New experimental, currently private module: prediction, that hosts classes that are used by the SelectByTargetMeanPerformance feature selection transformer. The estimators in this module have functionality that exceed that required by the selector, in that, they can output estimates of the target by taking the average across a group of variables.

  • New private module, prediction with a regression and a classification estimator (Morgan Sell and Soledad Galli)

  • TargetMeanRegressor: estimates the target based on the average target mean value per class or interval, across variables (Morgan Sell and Soledad Galli)

  • TargetMeanClassifier: estimates the target based on the average target mean value per class or interval, across variables (Morgan Sell and Soledad Galli)