Since we want to reduce the dimensionality of our dataset by compressing it onto a new feature subspace, we only select the subset of the eigenvectors (principal components) that contains most of the information (variance). The eigenvalues define the magnitude of the eigenvectors, so we have to sort the eigenvalues by decreasing magnitude; we are interested in the top k eigenvectors based on the values of their corresponding eigenvalues. But before we collect those k most informative eigenvectors, let us plot the variance explained ratios of the eigenvalues. The variance explained ratio of an
...more
