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Scale and Normalize: When to Use Each Method?

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a candidate's competency in feature scaling and normalization techniques within Machine Learning feature engineering, specifically the application of standardization and min-max normalization to numerical DataFrame columns.

  • easy
  • Boston Consulting Group
  • Machine Learning
  • Data Scientist

Scale and Normalize: When to Use Each Method?

Company: Boston Consulting Group

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Machine Learning

Difficulty: easy

Interview Round: Take-home Project

##### Scenario BCG CodeSignal notebook – feature scaling step before modeling ##### Question Given a DataFrame df with numeric columns age and income, demonstrate how to Standard-scale age and Min-Max normalize income. Explain when you would prefer each scaler. ##### Hints Use sklearn.preprocessing; relate to Gaussian vs bounded distributions.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's competency in feature scaling and normalization techniques within Machine Learning feature engineering, specifically the application of standardization and min-max normalization to numerical DataFrame columns.

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Boston Consulting Group logo
Boston Consulting Group
Aug 4, 2025, 10:55 AM
Data Scientist
Take-home Project
Machine Learning
2
0

Feature Scaling Before Modeling (CodeSignal Notebook)

Context

You're preparing features in a notebook step before training a model. You have a pandas DataFrame df with two numeric columns: age and income.

Task

  1. Standard-scale the age column (mean 0, variance 1).
  2. Min-Max normalize the income column to [0, 1].
  3. Briefly explain when you would prefer each scaler.

Assume scikit-learn is available.

Solution

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