Analysis of Student Performance Dataset

Lavya
February 22, 2025

1 Introduction
This document provides an analysis of the student performance dataset. The
dataset contains information about various aspects of student demographics and
their performance metrics.The analysis is done using Scikit-learn platform.scikit-
learn is a Python module for machine learning built on top of SciPy and is
distributed under the 3-Clause BSD license.
The project was started in 2007 by David Cournapeau as a Google Summer
of Code project, and since then many volunteers have contributed.

2 Dataset Description
The dataset used in this analysis contains the following columns:

• sex: Gender of the student (F or M).

• school: School name (GP or MS).
• address: Home address type (U for urban or R for rural).

• internet: Internet access at home (yes or no).

• Age: Age of the student.
• Mjob: Mother’s job (at home, health, services, etc.).

• Fjob: Father’s job (at home, health, services, etc.).

3 Preprocessing
Before analyzing the dataset, the following preprocessing steps were applied:

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3.1 Handling Missing Values
Handling missing values is crucial for ensuring that your dataset is complete
and that the machine learning algorithms can process the data effectively. Im-
putation
Imputation involves filling missing values with a specific value (mean, me-
dian, mode) or using more sophisticated methods.
Example: Simple Imputer

3.2 Encoding Categorical Data

Categorical columns were encoded using two methods:- Label Encoding: Each
category was converted into a numerical label One-Hot Encoding: Each category
was converted into binary columns.

3.3 Example Code for Label Encoding

from sklearn.preprocessing import LabelEncoder

# Initialize LabelEncoder
label_encoder = LabelEncoder()

# Apply LabelEncoder to each categorical column

for col in df.columns:
if df[col].dtype == ’object’:
df[col] = label_encoder.fit_transform(df[col])

3.4 Example Code for One-Hot Encoding

# Perform one-hot encoding using Pandas
df_encoded = pd.get_dummies(df, columns=[’sex’, ’school’, ’address’, ’internet’])

4 Data Visualization
Data visualization is a powerful tool for exploring and understanding the char-
acteristics and patterns within your dataset. It helps to identify trends, corre-
lations, and outliers, and provides insights that can inform the modeling pro-
cess.Here’s a summary of common data visualization techniques,as follows-

4.1 Distribution of Numerical Features

1.Histogram A histogram helps in understanding the distribution of a numerical
feature by showing the frequency of different ranges of values.Below is the image
for Histogram drawn for various parameters like age,Medu,Fedu,etc.

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 Figure 1: Histograms generated

2. Box Plots:
Box plots summarize the distribution by showing: Center line (median) Box
representing the interquartile range (IQR) containing the middle 50Whiskers
extending to data points within 1.5 times the IQR from the box. Outliers
(data points beyond the whiskers). Useful for comparing distributions between
features or groups within the data. Use matplotlib.pyplot.boxplot(data) or
seaborn.boxplot(data). 3.Pair plots Pair plotsare a type of visualization that

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helps you explore relationships between all pairs of numerical features in your
data. It creates a matrix of scatter plots, where each row represents a single
feature, and each column represents another feature. This allows you to see how
each feature interacts with all the others simultaneously.Pairplots obtained for
the dataset are as follows:-

Figure 2: Pyplots generated

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4.2 Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA):
This is an iterative process of uncovering patterns and relationships within the
data. It helps you gain insights and formulate hypotheses for further analysis
or modeling. Common EDA techniques include: Univariate Analysis: Ana-
lyze individual features to understand their distribution (e.g., histograms, box
plots for numerical features; frequency tables for categorical features). Bivari-
ate Analysis: Explore relationships between two features at a time using scatter
plots or correlation coefficients. Multivariate Analysis: Investigate relationships
between multiple features simultaneously (e.g., pair plots, principal component
analysis). Correlation through use of heatmaps as shown:

Figure 3: Correlation

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Figure 4: plotting the correlation of features which has euqul or greater than
+ 0.50 or -0.50

5 Feature engineering
Goals of Feature Engineering:
Improve Model Performance: Feature engineering aims to create features
that capture the underlying relationships within the data, allowing models to
learn more effectively and achieve better accuracy or performance on the target
variable. Enhance Model Interpretability: Sometimes, creating new features
or transforming existing ones can make the model’s decision process more un-
derstandable. This can be valuable in tasks where understanding the model’s
reasoning is important. Scikit-learn and Feature Engineering:
Scikit-learn provides a variety of tools within its preprocessing module to
assist with feature engineering tasks. Here are some examples:
StandardScaler: Scales features to unit variance and zero mean. OneHo-
tEncoder: Encodes categorical features into one-hot vectors. Imputer: Handles
missing values using various imputation strategies. PolynomialFeatures: Cre-
ates polynomial terms of existing features for capturing non-linear relationships.

6 Hyperparameter tuning
What are Hyperparameters?
Hyperparameters are distinct from model parameters. Model parameters are
the weights and biases learned by the model during its training process based
on the data. Hyperparameters, on the other hand, are set before training and
influence how the model learns from the data.
Examples of Hyperparameters in scikit-learn:

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 C in Support Vector Machines (SVM): Controls the trade-off between fitting
the training data and allowing for misclassifications. Number of estimators in
Random Forests: Determines the number of decision trees used in the ensem-
ble,etc. Hyperparameter Tuning Techniques in scikit-learn:
Scikit-learn offers several tools to automate the process of hyperparame-
ter tuning: GridSearchCV: This method performs an exhaustive grid search
over a predefined set of hyperparameter values. It trains the model with all
combinations of hyperparameters and evaluates their performance using cross-
validation. Finally, it selects the combination that yields the best score on the
validation set. RandomSearchCV: This approach explores the hyperparameter
space randomly, selecting random combinations of hyperparameter values from
a specified range. It can be more efficient than GridSearchCV, especially when
dealing with a large number of hyperparameters. Bayesian Optimization: This
is a more advanced technique that uses a statistical model to guide the search for
optimal hyperparameters. It iteratively evaluates hyperparameter combinations
and refines the search based on the observed performance.
Tips for Effective Hyperparameter Tuning:
Define a reasonable search space: Don’t choose an excessively large range for
hyperparameter values, as it can lead to computational inefficiency. Choose an
appropriate performance metric: Select a metric that aligns with your machine
learning task (e.g., accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score). Use cross-validation:
Ensure the chosen hyperparameters generalize well to unseen data by evaluating
them using cross-validation techniques. Consider early stopping: Implement
early stopping mechanisms to stop training when the model’s performance on
the validation set starts to deteriorate, preventing overfitting.

7 Classification and Regression

1.Classification
Purpose: To categorize or classify data points into discrete classes or labels.
Key Characteristics:
Output: A discrete label (e.g., ”spam” or ”not spam”, ”cat” or ”dog”).
Applications: Email filtering, medical diagnosis, image recognition, sentiment
analysis. Evaluation Metrics: Accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score, ROC-AUC.
Example:
Email Classification: Predict whether an email is ”spam” or ”not spam.”
Common Algorithms: Logistic Regression: Models the probability of a class
label. Decision Trees: Splits data into classes based on feature values,etc. ac-
curacy(Before Hyperparameter tuning)=0.765

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Figure 5: before Hyperparameter tuning

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 Figure 6: after Hyperparameter tuning

2.Regression
Purpose: To predict a continuous numerical value.
Key Characteristics:
Output: A continuous number (e.g., temperature, price, distance). Appli-
cations: Stock price prediction, house price estimation, sales forecasting. Eval-
uation Metrics: Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE),
R-squared.
Example:
House Price Prediction: Estimate the selling price of a house based on fea-
tures like size and location.
Common Algorithms:
Linear Regression: Models the relationship between features and a con-
tinuous target. Polynomial Regression: Extends linear regression to model
non-linear relationships. Results for Hyperparameter tuning performed are as

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follows:-

Figure 7: before Hyperparameter tuning

Figure 8: after Hyperparameter tuning

8 Conclusion
The analysis of the student performance dataset provides insights into various
factors affecting student demographics and performance. Further analysis and

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machine learning models can be applied for predictive insights.

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