# Numeric Population fields in Population Job?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/numeric-population-fields-in-population-job/171095>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-machine-learning\
**Created:** [March 6, 2019, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/numeric-population-fields-in-population-job/171095 "2019-03-06T11:20:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jong99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9dc877/32.png) [@jong99](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jong99)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2019, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/numeric-population-fields-in-population-job/171095/1 "2019-03-06T11:20:54Z")

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We're evaluating machine learning to see if it will do the job we want it to, but we are coming against issues when creating Population Jobs. For the population field we can only select keywords. Since our user ids are integers we can't split the population this way. If we store our user id instead as a keyword then we can select this and we get good results.

Is this restricted for cardinality issues, i.e. the same as this issue?

> [@Can not split by number fields in multi metric machine learning jobs](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-not-split-by-number-fields-in-multi-metric-machine-learning-jobs/93081):
>
> Hello. I have web server logs which contains numeric field response\_code. But I can not use this field in "Split Data" at machine learning multi metric jobs. In fact no numeric fields are showed here. Is this by design?

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**Author:** ![richcollier](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/richcollier/32/115035_2.png) [@richcollier](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/richcollier)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2019, 11:59am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/numeric-population-fields-in-population-job/171095/2 "2019-03-06T11:59:47Z")

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The Population UI doesn't allow it because often, a numerical field chosen as the population would be a misconfiguration (imagine selecting `response_time` as a population field, for example - it would not be sensible). In other words, it is trying to prevent you from making a mistake.

Now, if you really don't want to modify how that field is stored, you can still create a ML job in the UI - you just need to do it in the Advanced Job wizard (or the API). To make a job a population job, select the field that is the population as the `over_field_name` ([link](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elastic-stack-overview/current/ml-configuring-pop.html)). The Advanced Job Wizard does not prevent you from selecting numerical fields.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 12:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/numeric-population-fields-in-population-job/171095/3 "2019-04-03T12:10:44Z")

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