1. One or more non-transitory computer storage media storing computer-useable instructions that, when used by one or more computing devices, cause the one or more computing devices to perform operations comprising: referencing a nominal feature captured in a data set, wherein the nominal feature comprises a non-numeric value; determining a numeric feature to represent the nominal feature, wherein the numeric feature comprises a likelihood of a specific outcome occurring based on the value of the nominal feature; and using the numeric feature to generate a machine learned model to be used to predict an outcome associated with a future observation instance.