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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 ?

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1 Answer 1

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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:

  • Day of the week: integer/one-hot encoding for Monday, Tuesday, ..., Sunday
  • Month: integer/one-hot encoding for January, February, ..., December
  • Hour of the day: integer/one-hot encoding for 0, ..., 23
  • Seconds/minutes/hours/days since XY: Usually normalized or at least scaled in some way
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