In an embodiment, inbound queue management system 402 labels each data element in Acxiom as continuous (including interval), binary, ordinal, or nominal (categorical). For use in a logistic regression model 414, variables that have lookup fields are converted to integers. Following feature transformation of the variables, the final view outputs each variable with human-readable names (if known), and a tag at the end of the variable name. Illustrative end tags for transformed variable names include:
_binary: either 0 or 1
_ordinal_to_binary: either 0 or 1, where null values are mapped to 0
_flat_binary: mapped from a string field like “01001000” into multiple fields
_ordinal: as an integer, with null values left null
_interval: as an integer, with null values left null
_continuous: as an integer, with null values left null
_nominal: as an integer, with null values mapped to an additional integer
By applying the feature transformation rules described above, analytical engine 404 builds a simplified input data file from data retrieved. This simplified input data file facilitates predictive modeling with a binary target.