Impute vs. Ignore: Missing Values for Prediction

Sensor faults or communication errors can cause certain sensor readings to become unavailable for prediction purposes. In this paper we evaluate the performance of imputation techniques and techniques that ignore the missing values, in scenarios: (i) when values are missing only during prediction phase, and (ii) when values are missing during both the induction and prediction phase. We also investigated the influence of different scales of missingness on the performance of these treatments. The results can be used as a guideline to facilitate the choice of different missing value treatments under different circumstances.