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MLA-C01 Practice Question: A data scientist needs to normalize numeric…

A data scientist needs to normalize numeric features for a deep learning model. The features have different scales and distributions, and the model uses gradient descent. Which scaling method is MOST appropriate?

Answer choices

Why each option matters

Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.

Correct answer & explanation

StandardScaler

StandardScaler standardizes features by removing the mean and scaling to unit variance, which works well with gradient descent even if features are not normally distributed. MinMaxScaler is sensitive to outliers.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

  • RobustScaler

    Why it's wrong here

    RobustScaler uses median and IQR, robust to outliers but not always optimal for all distributions.

  • MinMaxScaler

    Why it's wrong here

    MinMaxScaler scales to a fixed range, but outliers can compress the scale and affect convergence.

  • MaxAbsScaler

    Why it's wrong here

    MaxAbsScaler scales by maximum absolute value, which assumes sparse data and may not be suitable.

  • StandardScaler

    Why this is correct

    StandardScaler centers and scales features, making gradient descent converge faster and more reliably.

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