# How to model a Machine learning problem considering links between features

Context:

To predict employee turnover ( will an employee leave? ), I have used one of the classification algorithms (LDA) to train my dataset, and then make predictions.

The dataset is quite small (500 lines), some 20 features, the following are some examples:

• Age
• Years_Spent: Years for an employee has spent in the company.
• Departement (IT, Commercial, Management...)
• Salary
• Salary_Increase
• Sale_Bonus ...

However, HR Experience tells us that:

1. For employees whose Years_Spent < 1.5, Salary_Increase is a feature which does not have any impact on turnover (Because of Salary_Increase > 0 only when Years_Spent >1.5).

2. Sale_Bonus will not have any impact on those who are not commercials. (Because IT guys will never recept sale bonus)

Here comes the problem: If I set Salary_Increase = 0 for employees whose Years_Spent <1.5 and Sale_Bonus = 0 for those who are not commercials, the classification algorithm will take 0 as a very small value, so a possible conclusion could be drawn by algorithm: "employeeA will leave because he never receive sale_bonus", (However, in reality, employeeA is from IT department, employeeA receive never sale_bonus and employeeA will not leave because of that), as we see, the constructed model is not correct.

My question is: How to handle this kind of problem, so that HR experience can be understood by classification algorithms?

Thank you for your patient reading and kindly welcome all sort of discussions!