What is an instance of an entity type in the context of feature engineering?

In the context of feature engineering, an instance of an entity type represents a singular example or occurrence of a broader category defined by that entity type. An entity type serves as a template or classification, encompassing all aspects relevant to that type, and each instance embodies a specific realization of those characteristics.

For instance, consider a entity type "Customer." Each individual customer—for example, John Doe—would be an instance of the "Customer" entity type. This instance contains specific attributes, like age, purchase history, and demographic data, which are used during feature engineering to create relevant features for machine learning models.

The other options do not encapsulate the notion of an individual occurrence within a broader category. A feature represents an attribute or variable derived from the data but does not denote an instance. A model signifies the algorithm used to make predictions based on input features rather than referring to singular data instances. A dataset constitutes a collection of many instances but is itself not representative of a single instance of any entity type.