What’s a Fourier transform?

Fourier Transform is a mathematical technique that transforms any function of time to a function of frequency. Fourier transform is closely related to Fourier series. It takes any time-based pattern for input and calculates the overall cycle offset, rotation speed and strength for all possible cycles. Fourier transform is best applied to waveforms since it … Read more

Explain the differences between Random Forest and Gradient Boosting machines.

Random forests are a significant number of decision trees pooled using averages or majority rules at the end. Gradient boosting machines also combine decision trees but at the beginning of the process unlike Random forests. Random forest creates each tree independent of the others while gradient boosting develops one tree at a time. Gradient boosting … Read more

What is the difference between stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and gradient descent (GD)?

Gradient Descent and Stochastic Gradient Descent are the algorithms that find the set of parameters that will minimize a loss function. The difference is that in Gradient Descend, all training samples are evaluated for each set of parameters. While in Stochastic Gradient Descent only one training sample is evaluated for the set of parameters identified. … Read more

What is a Box-Cox transformation?

Box-Cox transformation is a power transform which transforms non-normal dependent variables into normal variables as normality is the most common assumption made while using many statistical techniques. It has a lambda parameter which when set to 0 implies that this transform is equivalent to log-transform. It is used for variance stabilization and also to normalize … Read more

What is Time series?

A Time series is a sequence of numerical data points in successive order. It tracks the movement of the chosen data points, over a specified period of time and records the data points at regular intervals. Time series doesn’t require any minimum or maximum time input. Analysts often use Time series to examine data according … Read more