journal article·2026-06-28Open access

Hypothesis-Informed Feature Stability Scoring for High-Dimensional ETL Pipelines

Konstantin Piryankov, Iveta Grigorova, Aleksandar Karamfilov, Aleksandar Efremov

Applied Sciences· Volume 16· Issue 13

Abstract

High-dimensional financial Extract–Transform–Load (ETL) pipelines often contain heterogeneous variables whose statistical properties may change between recurring data deliveries, affecting feature reliability before downstream machine learning models are trained. This study extends a previously proposed Canberra-based data drift monitoring framework by introducing a hypothesis-informed feature stability component for automated feature assessment and prioritization. Unlike the prior descriptive framework, which relied on univariate and bivariate exploratory metrics, the proposed extension adds an inferential layer and evaluates how this layer changes feature ranking relative to the original score and alternative marginal drift measures. The method combines univariate deviations in summary statistics, bivariate deviations in dependency-related metrics, and hypothesis-based evidence from Anderson–Darling, Mann–Whitney U, and Levene tests. The resulting p-values are aggregated using a Landau-calibrated harmonic mean p-value formulation and transformed into a bounded hypothesis score, which is integrated into a composite variable-level stability ranking. The framework operates on precomputed exploratory data analysis (EDA) outputs, enabling scalable comparison between a validated reference dataset and a current ETL delivery. The proposed extension provides an interpretable and computationally efficient mechanism for identifying unstable features and supporting feature review, exclusion, or prioritization in automated machine learning pipelines.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Data Stream Mining Techniques · Advanced Statistical Process Monitoring · Imbalanced Data Classification Techniques

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Faculty of Automatics, Industrial Automation, Technical University of Sofia, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria

Faculty of German Education in Engineering and Business Administration, Technical University of Sofia, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria

Funding

European Union

References (38)

Show source-provided references
1. An Introduction to Variable and Feature Selection
2. Feature Selection for High-Dimensional Data10.1007/s10287-008-0070-7 ↗
3. Wrappers for Feature Subset Selection10.1016/S0004-3702(97)00043-X ↗
4. Liu, H., and Motoda, H. (1998). Feature Selection for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Kluwer Academic Publishers.10.1007/978-1-4615-5689-3 ↗
5. Feature selection techniques for machine learning: A survey of more than two decades of research10.1007/s10115-023-02010-5 ↗
6. On the Stability of Feature Selection Algorithms
7. Automating Large-Scale Data Quality Verification10.14778/3229863.3229867 ↗
8. Breck, E., Polyzotis, N., Roy, S., Whang, S.E., and Zinkevich, M. (April, January 31). Data Validation for Machine Learning. Proceedings of the MLSys 2019, Stanford, CA, USA.
9. Data Lifecycle Challenges in Production Machine Learning: A Survey10.1145/3299887.3299891 ↗
10. A Survey of Data Quality Requirements That Matter in ML Development Pipelines
11. Fawcett, T., and Provost, F. (1999, January 15–18). Activity Monitoring: Noticing Interesting Changes in Behavior. Proceedings of the Fifth ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, San Diego, CA, USA.10.1145/312129.312195 ↗
12. A Survey on Concept Drift Adaptation10.1145/2523813 ↗
13. Characterizing Concept Drift10.1007/s10618-015-0448-4 ↗
14. Learning under Concept Drift: A Review
15. Ben-David, S., Blitzer, J., Crammer, K., and Pereira, F. (2006, January 4–7). Analysis of Representations for Domain Adaptation. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
16. Discriminative Learning under Covariate Shift
17. Rabanser, S., Günnemann, S., and Lipton, Z.C. (2019, January 8–14). Failing Loudly: An Empirical Study of Methods for Detecting Dataset Shift. Proceedings of the 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2019), Vancouver, BC, Canada.
18. A benchmark and survey of fully unsupervised concept drift detectors on real-world data streams10.1007/s41060-024-00620-y ↗
19. On Information and Sufficiency10.1214/aoms/1177729694 ↗
20. Divergence Measures Based on the Shannon Entropy10.1109/18.61115 ↗
21. Villani, C. (2009). Optimal Transport: Old and New, Springer.10.1007/978-3-540-71050-9 ↗
22. Computational Optimal Transport: With Applications to Data Science10.1561/2200000073 ↗
23. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov Test for Goodness of Fit10.1080/01621459.1951.10500769 ↗
24. Piryankov, K., Grigorova, I., Karamfilov, A., and Efremov, A. (2026). Automated Data Monitoring Using a Canberra-Based Drift Score. Appl. Sci., 16.10.3390/app16052232 ↗
25. Data-centric Artificial Intelligence: A Survey10.1145/3711118 ↗
26. The Harmonic Mean p-Value for Combining Dependent Tests10.1073/pnas.1814092116 ↗
27. K-Sample Anderson–Darling Tests
28. On a Test of Whether One of Two Random Variables Is Stochastically Larger than the Other10.1214/aoms/1177730491 ↗
29. Olkin, I. (1960). Robust Tests for Equality of Variances. Contributions to Probability and Statistics: Essays in Honor of Harold Hotelling, Stanford University Press.
30. Robust Tests for the Equality of Variances10.1080/01621459.1974.10482955 ↗
31. Fisher, R.A. (1925). Statistical Methods for Research Workers, Oliver and Boyd.
32. Stouffer, S.A., Suchman, E.A., DeVinney, L.C., Star, S.A., and Williams, R.M. (1949). The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life, Princeton University Press.
33. Tippett, L.H.C. (1931). The Methods of Statistics: An Introduction Mainly for Workers in the Biological Sciences, Williams & Norgate.
34. Teoria statistica delle classi e calcolo delle probabilità
35. The proof and measurement of association between two things10.2307/1412159 ↗
36. A new measure of rank correlation10.1093/biomet/30.1-2.81 ↗
37. Data evaluation and enhancement for quality improvement of machine learning10.1109/TR.2021.3070863 ↗
38. Werner, E., Kumar, N., Lieber, M., Torge, S., Gumhold, S., and Nagel, W.E. (2023). Towards Computational Performance Engineering for Unsupervised Concept Drift Detection–Complexities, Benchmarking, Performance Analysis. arXiv.10.5220/0012758600003756 ↗