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I'm working on a project about predicting kickstarter project success(classification) and my dataset has many columns that could be used as features such as : state_changed_at, launched_at, created_at.
Now the dataset has these features on unix timestamps.
Do I need to convert dates to some other format?
Can date data be used as a feature ?
If so how do I handle them ?
Do I keep them as a unix timestamp and try to scale/normalize them ?
Can date data be used as a feature?
Yes.
If so how do I handle them ?
Think about your problem. Why should the date be a reasonable indicator for the success of a startup? Answering this question tells you also in which way you need to transform it.
Most often, when I use some date information for models, I do the following:
