TheCoconutTree t1_j6lu39i wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:05 AM

Formatting lat/lng data for neural net feature input:

I've got latitude/longitude columns in a sql table that I'd like to add as features for a neural net classifier model. In terms of formatting for input, I plan to normalize latitude values to a range between 0-1, with 0 mapping to the largest possible negative lat value, and 1 mapping to the largest possible positive lat value. Then do the same for longitude, and pass them in as separate features.

Does that seem like a reasonable approach? Any other tricks I should know?

SawtoothData t1_j6olw50 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 8:20 PM

I don't know your application but, if lat/lon don't work very well, you could also try something like geohashing.

Something that's weird about longitude is that it loops. you might have weird things at the boundary. It's also odd that the distance between two points is also a function of latitude.

TheCoconutTree t1_j6otii7 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 9:07 PM

That's a good point about longitude looping. I hadn't thought about that. I'm designing a classifier, and would like to include geographic location as one of the input variables.