Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Feature

Definition

In machine learning, a feature is an individual measurable property or characteristic of a phenomenon being observed. Features are the inputs to your machine learning model.

Why It Matters

The quality of your features is critical to the performance of your model. Choosing informative, discriminating, and independent features is a key part of the art of machine learning.

Contextual Example

To predict a house's price, you might use features like its square footage, number of bedrooms, age, and location. Each of these is a feature.

Common Misunderstandings

  • The process of creating and selecting features is called "feature engineering".
  • A feature is a column in a typical machine learning dataset.

Related Terms

Last Updated: December 17, 2025