Is mean imputation of missing data acceptable practice? Why or why not?

Data Science, AI and ML
#1

The process of replacing null values in a data collection with the data’s mean is known as mean imputation.

Mean imputation is typically considered terrible practice since it ignores feature correlation. Consider the following scenario: we have a table with age and fitness scores, and an eight-year-old has a missing fitness score. If we average the fitness scores of people between the ages of 15 and 80, the eighty-year-old will appear to have a significantly greater fitness level than he actually does.

Second, mean imputation decreases the variance of our data while increasing bias. As a result of the reduced variance, the model is less accurate and the confidence interval is narrower.