Glossary#

child dataframe#

A dataframe that references another dataframe via relationship. The “many” in a one-to-many relationship.

ColumnSchema#

All of a Woodwork column’s type information including the logical type and any semantic tags.

cutoff time#

The last point in time data is allowed to be used when calculating a feature

EntitySet#

A collection of dataframes and the relationships between them. Represented by the EntitySet class.

feature#

A transformation of data used for machine learning. Featuretools has a custom language for defining features as described here. All features are represented by subclasses of FeatureBase.

feature engineering#

The process of transforming data into representations that are better for machine learning.

instance#

Equivalent to a row in a relational database. Each dataframe has many instances, and each instance has a value for each column and feature defined on the dataframe.

logical type#

Additional information about how a column should be interpreted or parsed beyond how the data is stored on disk or in memory. Used to determine which primitives can be applied to a column to generate features.

parent dataframe#

A dataframe that is referenced by another dataframe via relationship. The “one” in a one-to-many relationship.

relationship#

A mapping between a parent dataframe and a child dataframe. The child dataframe must contain a column referencing the index column on the parent dataframe. Represented by the Relationship class.

semantic tag#

Optional additional information on the column about the meaning or potential uses of data. Used to determine which primitives can be applied to a column to generate features.

target dataframe#

The dataframe for which we will be making features