Predicting User Lifetime Value with AutoML Tables: Best Practices for Time-Series Data

Enhancing Marketing Strategies with AutoML Tables: Predicting User Lifetime Value

Question

You work for a large hotel chain and have been asked to assist the marketing team in gathering predictions for a targeted marketing strategy.

You need to make predictions about user lifetime value (LTV) over the next 20 days so that marketing can be adjusted accordingly.

The customer dataset is in BigQuery, and you are preparing the tabular data for training with AutoML Tables.

This data has a time signal that is spread across multiple columns.

How should you ensure that AutoML fits the best model to your data?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

D.

The correct answer is C. Submit the data for training without performing any manual transformations, and indicate an appropriate column as the Time column. Allow AutoML to split your data based on the time signal provided, and reserve the more recent data for the validation and testing sets.

Explanation: In this scenario, we are dealing with a time series dataset, which means that we have data points that are ordered in time. It is crucial to handle time series data appropriately to obtain the best results. AutoML Tables is a machine learning service that automates the process of building machine learning models on tabular data.

In this case, we have to prepare the data for training with AutoML Tables. The data has a time signal spread across multiple columns. We need to ensure that AutoML fits the best model to our data. There are a few ways we can handle time series data with AutoML Tables:

A. Manually combine all columns that contain a time signal into an array. Allow AutoML to interpret this array appropriately. Choose an automatic data split across the training, validation, and testing sets. In this approach, we manually combine all columns that contain a time signal into an array. AutoML will treat this array as a single column and perform automatic feature engineering. We choose an automatic data split across the training, validation, and testing sets. This approach can work, but it may not be the best option in all cases.

B. Submit the data for training without performing any manual transformations. Allow AutoML to handle the appropriate transformations. Choose an automatic data split across the training, validation, and testing sets. In this approach, we submit the data for training without any manual transformations. AutoML will handle the appropriate transformations, including feature engineering. We choose an automatic data split across the training, validation, and testing sets. This approach can work, but it may not be the best option in all cases.

C. Submit the data for training without performing any manual transformations and indicate an appropriate column as the Time column. Allow AutoML to split your data based on the time signal provided, and reserve the more recent data for the validation and testing sets. In this approach, we submit the data for training without any manual transformations. We indicate an appropriate column as the Time column. AutoML will use the time signal provided to split the data into training, validation, and testing sets. It will reserve the more recent data for the validation and testing sets. This approach is the best option for time series data.

D. Submit the data for training without performing any manual transformations. Use the columns that have a time signal to manually split your data. Ensure that the data in your validation set is from 30 days after the data in your training set and that the data in your testing sets from 30 days after your validation set. In this approach, we submit the data for training without any manual transformations. We use the columns that have a time signal to manually split our data. We ensure that the data in our validation set is from 30 days after the data in our training set, and the data in our testing sets from 30 days after our validation set. This approach can work, but it requires manual effort and may not be the best option in all cases.

Therefore, the best approach is to choose option C. We should submit the data for training without performing any manual transformations and indicate an appropriate column as the Time column. AutoML will use the time signal provided to split the data into training, validation, and testing sets, and it will reserve the more recent data for the validation and testing sets. This approach is the most efficient and effective for time series data.