Data Science

(CS3206)
Lecture #3
Data Categorization

Dr. Debasis Samanta

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
 Quote of the day..

● ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read
and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.’

–Alvin Toffler

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Today’s discussion…
● NOIR topology
● Nominal scale
○ Binary
■ Symmetric
■ Asymmetric

● Ordinal scale
● Interval and Ratio scale
● Multidimensional Data Model

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Data in Data Analytics

● Entity: A particular thing is called entity or object.

● Attribute. An attribute is a measurable or observable property of an
entity.
● Data. A measurement of an attribute is called data.
● Note
○ Data defines an entity.
○ Computer can manage all type of data (e.g., audio, video, text, etc.).
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 Types of Data Sets
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Data in Data Analytics
○ In general, there are many types of data that can be used to measure the properties of
an entity.

○ A good understanding of data scales (also called scales of measurement) is important.

○ Depending the scales of measurement, different technique are followed to derive

unknown knowledge in the form of
■ patterns, associations, anomalies or similarities from a volume of data.

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 NOIR
Classification of scales of Measurement
NOIR classification
○ The mostly recommended scales of measurement are

N: Nominal
O: Ordinal
I: Interval
R: Ratio

The NOIR scale is the fundamental building block on which the extended data types
are built.

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 NOIR Classification

Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio

Alphabetical
Binary Ternary Others
Ordered Discrete

Numerically
Symmetric
Ordered Continuous

Literally
Asymmetric
Ordered
Properties of data
○ Following FOUR properties (operations) of data are pertinent.

# Property Operation Type

1. Distinctiveness = and ≠
Categorical
(Qualitative)
2. Order <,≤,>,≥

3. Addition + and -
Numerical
(Quantitative)
4. Multiplication * and /
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NOIR summary
✔ Nominal (with distinctiveness property only)

✔ Ordinal (with distinctive and order property only)

✔ Interval (with additive property + property of Ordinal data)

✔ Ratio (with multiplicative property + property of Interval

data)

○ Further, nominal and ordinal are collectively referred to as categorical or qualitative data.
Whereas, interval and ratio data are collectively referred to as quantitative or numeric data.

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Nominal scale
○ Definition
A variable that takes a value among a set of mutually exclusive codes that have no logical
order is known as a nominal variable.

○ Examples
Gender Used letters or numbers
{ M, F} or { 1, 0 }

Blood groups Used string

{A , B , AB , O }

Rhesus (Rh) factors Used symbols

{+ , - }

Country code ??
????

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Nominal scale
Note
● The nominal scale is used to label data categorization using a
consistent naming convention.

● The labels can be numbers, letters, strings, enumerated constants

or other keyboard symbols.

● Nominal data thus makes “category” of a set of data.

● The number of categories should be two (binary) or more (ternary,

etc.), but countably finite.

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Nominal scale
Note
● A nominal data may be numerical in form, but the numerical
values have no mathematical interpretation.
○ For example, 10 prisoners are 100, 101, … 110, but; 100 + 110 =
210 is meaningless. They are simply labels.
● Two labels may be identical ( = ) or dissimilar ( ≠ ).
● These labels do not have any ordering among themselves.
○ For example, we cannot say blood group B is better or worse than
group A.
● Labels (from two different attributes) can be combined to give
another nominal variable.
○ For example, blood group with Rh factor ( A+ , A- , AB+, etc.)

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Binary scale
● Definition
A nominal variable with exactly two mutually exclusive categories
that have no logical order is known as binary variable

● Examples
Switch: {ON, OFF}
Attendance: {True, False}
Entry: {Yes, No}
etc.

Note
● A Binary variable is a special case of a nominal variable that
takes only two possible values.

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Symmetric and Asymmetric Binary Scale
● Different binary variables may have unequal importance.

● If two choices of a binary variable have equal

importance, then it is called symmetric binary variable.
○ Example: Gender = {male , female}
// usually of equal probability.

● If the two choices of a binary variable have unequal

importance, it is called asymmetric binary variable.
○ Example: Food preference = {V , NV}

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Operations on Nominal variables
● Summary statistics applicable to nominal data are mode,
contingency correlation, etc.
● Arithmetic (+,-,*and/) and logical operations (<,>,≠ etc.) are
not permitted.
● The allowed operations are : accessing (read, check, etc.) and
re-coding (into another non-overlapping symbol set, that is,
one-to-one mapping) etc.
● Nominal data can be visualized using line charts, bar charts or
pie charts etc.
● Two or more nominal variables can be combined to generate
other nominal variable.
○ Example: Gender (M,F) × Marital status (S, M, D, W)

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Ordinal scale
● Definition
Ordered nominal data are known as ordinal data and the
variable that generates it is called ordinal variable.
○ Example:
Shirt size = { S, M, L, XL, XXL}

Note
The values assumed by an ordinal variable can be ordered
among themselves as each pair of values can be compared
literally or using relational operators ( < , ≤ , > , ≥ ).
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Operation on Ordinal data
● Usually relational operators can be used on ordinal data.
● Summary measures mode and median can be used on ordinal data.
● Ordinal data can be ranked (numerically, alphabetically, etc.) Hence,
we can find any of the percentiles measures of ordinal data.
● Calculations based on order are permitted (such as count, min, max,
etc.).
● Spearman’s R can be used as a measure of the strength of
association between two sets of ordinal data.
● Numerical variable can be transformed into ordinal variable and
vice-versa, but with a loss of information.
○ For example, Age [1, … 100] = [young, middle-aged, old]

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Interval scale
● Definition
Interval-scale variables are continuous measurements of a roughly linear
scale.
● Example:
temperature, calendar dates, etc.

Note
● Interval data are with well-defined interval.
● Interval data are measured on a numeric scale (with +ve, 0 (zero),
and –ve values).
● Interval data has a zero point on origin. However, the origin does
not imply a true absence of the measured characteristics.
○ For example, temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit; 0⁰ does not
mean absence of temperature, that is, no heat!

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Operation on Interval data
● We can add to or from interval data.
○ For example: date1 + x-days = date2
● Subtraction can also be performed.
○ For example: current date – date of birth = age
● Negation (changing the sign) and multiplication by a
constant are permitted.
● All operations on ordinal data defined are also valid here.
● Linear (e.g. cx + d ) or Affine transformations are
permissible.
● Other one-to-one non-linear transformation (e.g., log,
exp, sin, etc.) can also be applied.

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Operation on Interval data
Note
● Interval data can be transformed to nominal or ordinal scale, but with
loss of information.

● Interval data can be graphed using histogram, frequency polygon,

etc.

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Ratio scale
● Definition
Interval data with a clear definition of “zero” are called ratio data.
○ Example:
Temperature in Kelvin scale, Intensity of earth-quake on Richter scale, Sound
intensity in Decibel, cost of an article, population of a country,weight, height,
latitude, longitude, weather, etc.

Note
● All ratio data are interval data but the reverse is not true.
● In ratio scale, both differences between data values and
ratios (of non-zero) data pairs are meaningful.
● Ratio data may be in linear or non-linear scale.
● Both interval and ratio data can be stored in same data type
(i.e., integer, float, double, etc.)
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Operation on Ratio data
● All arithmetic operations on interval data are applicable to ratio data.

● In addition, multiplication, division, etc. are allowed.

● Any linear transformation of the form ( ax + b )/c are known.

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→

→
→

→
Data Cube
Multidimensional Data Modeling
Concept of data cube
● A multidimensional data model views data in the form of a cube.

● A data cube is characterized with two things

○ Dimension: the perspective or entities with respect to which an organization
wants to keep record.
○ Fact: The actual values in the record

Example.
● Rainfall data of Metrological Department
○ Time (Year, Season, Month, Week, Day, etc.)
○ Location (Country, Region, State, etc.)

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2-D view of rainfall data

● In this 2-D representation, the rainfall for “North-East” region are

shown with respect to different months for a period of years

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3-D view of rainfall data
● Suppose, we want to represent data according to times (Year, Month)
as well as regions of a country say East, West, North, North-East, etc.

⚫ A 2-D view of 3-D rainfall data

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3-D view of rainfall data

⚫ Data cube: This enables us a 3-D view of the rainfall data

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3-D view of rainfall data

India China Russia Pakistan

⚫ Data cube: This enables us a 3-D view of the rainfall data

for a continent say?

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Data cube aggregation
ROLL UP

DRILL DOWN
CS 40003: Data Analytics 32 32
Data cube segregation

BASE CUBOID

SLICE
CS 40003: Data Analytics 33 33
Data representation
⚫ How a document (e.g., text) can be represented?

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Data representation
⚫ How an image can be represented?

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 Data representation
⚫ How a video can be represented?

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 Data representation
⚫ How the streaming data from an artificial earth satellite can be
represented?

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 Reference

⚫ The detail material related to this lecture can be found in

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques (3rd Edn.) by Jiawei Han,

Michelline Kamber and Jian Pei, Morgan Kaufmann (2014).

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Present size of the digital universe is in the order of

(a) Terabyte (TB)

(b) Petabyte (PB)

(c) Exabyte (EB)

(d) Zetabyte (ZB)

Which is/are the source of data in data analytics?

(a) Scientific instruments

(b) Social media

(c) Mobile devices

(d) Sensor networks

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Elastic is a tool for

(a) Strong big data

(b) Processing data with scalable architecture

(c) A distributed file system

(d) Cloud security

MapReduce is meant for

(a) Data visualizations

(b) Massive parallel programming

(c) Query reporting

(d) Data storage in Cloud

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Which data scale uses “zero point as origin”?

A. Nominal
B. Ordinal
C. Interval
D. Ratio

Which operation cannot be carried out on “Ordinal” data?

(a) To find the minimum

(b) To find the mean

(c) To find the mode

(d) To find the median

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 Map from entries in Column A to appropriate entries in Column B in the
following table.

(a) (p)-(y), (q)-(w), (r)-(x), (s)-(z)

(b) (p)-(x), (q)-(w), (r)-(y), (s)-(z)

(c) (p)-(w), (q)-(y), (r)-(z), (s)-(x)

(d) (p)-(y), (q)-(x), (r)-(z), (s)-(w)

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*Category denotes whether a student belongs to UG or PG

If the structure is used to store the data of 100 students, then the
dimension of the data is
(a) 2 (b) 7 (c) 100 (d) 200 (e) 700

According to NOIR classification, the attribute “Category” in Table. Q22

can be categorized as
(a) Categorical
(b) Symmetric binary
(c) Asymmetric binary
(d) Ordinal

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Any question?

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Questions of the day…
Consider an image as an entity.
• What are the attributes you should think to represent an
image?
• Categorize each attribute according to the NOIR data
classification.
• Suppose, two images are given. Give an idea to check if
two images are identical or not.

How you can convert a data of interval type to ordinal

type? Give an example. What are the issues of such
transformation? Whether the reverse is possible or not?
Justify you answer.

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Questions of the day…

What are the different properties used to categorize the data

according to NOIR data categorization?

Given an entity say “STUDENT” with the following attributes. Identify

the NOIR category to which each of them belongs.

Scholarship Name RollNo DoB Aaadhar Gender Mobiloe Email Id

amount No. No.

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Questions of the day…

Give the concept of data cube to represent hyper-dimensional data?

Also, explain with suitable diagrams the following.
■ Roll up
■ Drill down
■ Slice

Using the concept of data cube, how YouTube can archive videos of
all type?
Give FOUR differences between data of types “interval” and
“ratio-scale”

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