What is the primary purpose of data normalization in a machine learning pipeline?

Question

Data Science — Easy

What is the primary purpose of data normalization in a machine learning pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Normalization, such as Min-Max scaling, transforms features to a specific range, typically [0, 1]. This ensures that features with larger magnitudes do not disproportionately influence models that rely on distance metrics, such as K-Nearest Neighbors or Support Vector Machines. Options B, C, and D refer to imputation, encoding, and dimensionality reduction, respectively, which are distinct preprocessing tasks.