Preprocessing

Short Lecture Notes

cse352

Professor Anita Wasilewska

 Data Preprocessing
•  Why preprocess the data?
•  Data cleaning
•  Data integration and transformation
•  Data reduction
•  Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
•  Summary
 TYPES OF DATA (1)
•  Generally we distinguish:
Quantitative Data
Qualitative Data
•  Bivaluated: attributes have only two
values -often very useful
•  Remember: Null Values are not
applicable
•  Missing data usually not acceptable
 Why Data Preprocessing?

•  Data in the real world is dirty

incomplete: lacking attribute values, lacking
certain attributes of interest, or containing
only aggregate data
noisy: containing errors or outliers
inconsistent: containing discrepancies in
codes or names
 Why Data Preprocessing?

•  No quality data, no quality results!

 Data Quality

•  A well-accepted multidimensional view of

data quality:
–  Accuracy
–  Completeness
–  Consistency
–  Timeliness
–  Believability
–  Interpretability
–  Accessibility
Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing

•  Data cleaning
–  Fill in missing values, smooth noisy data,
identify or remove outliers, and resolve
inconsistencies
•  Data integration (if needed)
–  Integration of multiple databases, data cubes,
or files
•  Data transformation
–  Normalization and aggregation
Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing

•  Data reduction
–  Obtains reduced representation in volume but
produces the same or similar analytical results
•  Data discretization
–  particular importance for numerical data;
–  reduces the number of values of attributes
–  Often transform quantitative data into
qualitative
Forms of data preprocessing
 Data Cleaning

•  Data cleaning tasks

– Fill in missing values
– Identify outliers and smooth out noisy
data
– Correct inconsistent data
Data sets can require preprocessing techniques to ensure accurate,
efficient, or meaningful analysis.

Data cleaning refers to methods for finding, removing, and replacing bad
or missing data.

— Detecting local extrema and abrupt changes can help to identify

significant data trends.

— Smoothing and detrending are processes for removing noise and

linear trends from data,

— while scaling changes the bounds of the data.

— Grouping and binning methods are techniques that identify

relationships among the data variables.
 Missing Data
•  Data is not always available
•  Missing data may be due to
–  equipment malfunction
–  inconsistent with other recorded data and thus
deleted
–  data not entered due to misunderstanding
–  certain data may not be considered important at the
time of entry
–  not register history or changes of the data
•  Missing data may need to be inferred.
 How to Handle Missing Data?
•  Ignore the tuple (record) : usually done when class label
(a value of the classification attribute) is missing
(assuming the tasks in classification)
•  It is not effective when the percentage of missing values
per attribute varies considerably.
•  Fill in the missing value manually: tedious + often
infeasible
•  Fill in the missing value automatically (methods to
follow)
 Fill in Missing Data
Use a global constant to fill in the missing value (not
efficient, often incorrect or in our case not acceptable)
•  Use the attribute values mean to fill in the missing
value
•  In case of the classification: use the attribute values
mean for all samples belonging to the same class to
fill in the missing value:
•  Use the most probable value to fill in the missing value
•  In case of the classification: use the most probable
value for all samples belonging to the same class
 Noisy Data

•  Noise: random error or variance in a

measured variable (numeric attribute value)
•  Incorrect attribute values may due to
faulty data collection instruments,
data entry problems, data transmission
problems,
technology limitation,
inconsistency in naming convention
 Other Data Problems

•  Other data problems which requires data

cleaning
–  duplicate records
–  incomplete data
–  inconsistent data
 How to Handle Noisy Data?
•  Binning method:
–  first sort data (values of the attribute we
consider) and partition them into (equal-depth)
bins
–  then apply one of the methods:
–  smooth by bin means, (replace noisy values in
the bin by the bin mean)
–  smooth by bin median, (replace noisy values
in the bin by the bin median)
–  smooth by bin boundaries, (replace noisy
values in the bin by the bin boundaries)
Binning method is also used for data
discretization
 How to Handle Noisy Data?
•  Clustering
–  Are used to detect and remove outliers in the
attributes values, as well as in the whole data
set
•  Combined computer and human inspection
–  detect suspicious attribute values and check
by human
•  Regression
–  smooth by fitting the attribute values into
regression functions
 Simple Discretization Methods:
Binning
•  Equal-width (distance) partitioning:
–  It divides the range (values of a given
attribute)
–  into N intervals of equal size: uniform grid
–  if A and B are the lowest and highest values
of the attribute, the width of intervals will be:
W = (B-A)/N
–  The most straightforward
–  But outliers may dominate presentation
–  Skewed data is not handled well.
Binning is a unsupervised technique of converting Numerical data to
categorical data but it do not use the class information.

In Equal width, we divide the data in equal widths. In order to calculate

width we have the formula. width=(max−min)/N

So from the available data in the problem: 5, 10, 11, 13, 15, 35, 50 ,55,
72, 92, 204, 215 we have 7570 is the width.

We divide the data with three categories:

5 to 75 —— 75 to 145 —— 145 to 215.

Now we keep the numbers in the above ranges.Thus,

— bin1: 5,10,11,13,15,35,50,55,72

— bin2: 92 //will hold only one value as we have only one value exist
between 75 and 145

— bin3: 204,215.
 Simple Discretization Methods:
Binning

•  Equal-depth (frequency) partitioning:

–  It divides the range (values of a given
attribute)
–  into N intervals, each containing
approximately same number of samples
(elements)
–  Good data scaling
–  Managing categorical attributes can be
tricky; works on the numerical attributes
Binning Methods for Data Smoothing
(simple example)
•  Sorted data (attribute values ) for price (attribute: price in
dollars): 4, 8, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34
•  Partition into (equal-depth) bins:
•  Bin 1: 4, 8, 9, 15
•  Bin 2: 21, 21, 24, 25
•  Bin 3: 26, 28, 29, 34
•  Smoothing by bin means:
•  Bin 1: 9, 9, 9, 9
•  Bin 2: 23, 23, 23, 23
•  Bin 3: 29, 29, 29, 29
•  Smoothing by bin boundaries:
•  Bin 1: 4, 4, 4, 15
•  Bin 2: 21, 21, 25, 25
•  Bin 3: 26, 26, 26, 34
•  Replace all values in a BIN by ONE value (smoothing values)
Binning Methods for Data DISCRETIZATION
(simple example)
•  Sorted data (attribute values ) for price (attribute: price in
dollars): 4, 8, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34
•  Partition into (equal-depth) bins:
•  Bin 1: 4, 8, 9, 15
•  Bin 2: 21, 21, 24, 25
•  Bin 3: 26, 28, 29, 34
•  Smoothing by bin means:
•  Bin 1: 9, 9, 9, 9
•  Bin 2: 23, 23, 23, 23
•  Bin 3: 29, 29, 29, 29
•  CREATES 3 VALUES for the attribute – we use the bean mean
9 when numerical values are needed
•  Smoothing by bin boundaries:
•  Bin 1: 4, 4, 4, 15
•  Bin 2: 21, 21, 25, 25
•  Bin 3: 26, 26, 26, 34
•  Replace all values in a BIN by ONE value (smoothing values)
 Binning Methods for Data DISCRETIZATION
•  Sorted data (attribute values ) for price (attribute: price
in dollars): 4, 8, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34
•  Partition into (equal-depth) bins:
•  Bin 1: 4, 8, 9, 15
•  Bin 2: 21, 21, 24, 25
•  Bin 3: 26, 28, 29, 34
•  Smoothing by bin means:
•  Replace all values in a BIN by ONE value (smoothing
values)
•  Bin 1: 9, 9, 9, 9
•  Bin 2: 23, 23, 23, 23
•  Bin 3: 29, 29, 29, 29
•  CREATES 3 VALUES for the attribute
•  We use the bean means 9,23,29 when numerical
values are needed
 Binning Methods for Data DISCRETIZATION
Smoothing by bin means:
•  Replace all values in a BIN by ONE value (smoothing
values)
•  Bin 1: 9, 9, 9, 9
•  Bin 2: 23, 23, 23, 23
•  Bin 3: 29, 29, 29, 29
•  CREATES 3 VALUES for the attribute
•  We create a BIN Category like: small , medium, large
•  When we want to better express the descriptions
•  We replace a numerical values : 4, 8, 9, 15 in any
record by category small
•  We replace a numerical values : 21, 24, 25 in any
record by category medium
•  We replace a numerical values : 26, 28, 29, 34
•  in any record by category large
 Cluster Analysis
As discretization method it perform clustering on attributes values
and replace all values in the cluster by a cluster representative
 Data Integration
•  Data integration:
–  combines data from multiple sources into a coherent
store
•  Schema integration
–  integrate metadata from different sources
–  Entity identification problem: identify real world entities
from multiple data sources, e.g., A.cust-id ≡ B.cust-#
•  Detecting and resolving data value conflicts
–  for the same real world entity, attribute values from
different sources are different
–  possible reasons: different representations, different
scales, e.g., metric vs. British units
 Regression and Log-Linear Models

•  Linear regression: Data are modeled to fit a straight line

–  Often uses the least-square method to fit the line

•  Multiple regression: allows a response variable Y to be

modeled as a linear function of multidimensional feature
vector

•  Log-linear model: approximates discrete

multidimensional probability distributions
 Linear Regression
Use regression analysis on values of attributes
to fill missing values.
y

Y1

Y1 y=x+1

X1 x
 Clustering
•  Partition data set (it means the values of an attribute in
case of preprocessing) into clusters, and one can store
cluster representation only, i.e. replace all values of the
cluster by the one value representing this cluster.
•  We also can use hierarchical clustering that can be
stored in multi-dimensional index tree structures
•  There are many choices of clustering definitions and
clustering algorithms (Chapter 7)
 Sampling
•  Sampling allows the learning algorithm to run in
complexity that is potentially sub-linear to the size of the
data

•  Sampling is a method of choosing a representative

subset of the data
–  Simple random sampling may have very poor performance in the
presence of skew data
•  There are adaptive sampling methods
–  Stratified sampling:
•  Approximate the percentage of each class (or subpopulation of
interest) in the overall database
•  Used in conjunction with skewed data
(example : according to age - youth, middel-aged, senior)
 Sampling

W O R
SRS le random t
p
(sim le withou
s am p t)
emen
l ac
rep

SRSW
R

Raw Data
 Discretization
•  Three types of attributes:
–  Nominal — values from an unordered set
–  Ordinal — values from an ordered set
–  Continuous — real numbers
•  Discretization:
•  divide the range of a continuous attribute into
intervals
–  Some classification algorithms only accept
categorical (non- numerical) attributes.
–  Reduce data (attributes values) size by discretization
–  Prepare for further analysis
Discretization and Concept Hierachies for
numerical data
•  Discretization
–  reduce the number of values for a given continuous
attribute by dividing the range of the attribute (values
of the attribute) into intervals.
–  Interval labels are then used to replace actual data
values.
•  Concept hierarchies
–  reduce the data by collecting and replacing low level
concepts (such as numeric values for the attribute
age) by higher level concepts (such as young,
middle-aged, or senior) transforming numerical
attributes into categorical
 Segmentation by natural partitioning
3-4-5 rule can be used to segment numeric data (attribute
values) into relatively uniform, natural intervals.
•  If an interval covers 3, 6, 7 or 9 distinct values at the
most significant digit, partition the range into 3 equi-width
intervals
•  If it covers 2, 4, or 8 distinct values at the most
significant digit, partition the range into 4 intervals
•  If it covers 1, 5, or 10 distinct values at the most
significant digit, partition the range into 5 intervals
 Concept Hierarchy generation for
Categorical data
•  Concept hierarchy is:
•  Specification of a partial ordering of attributes
explicitly at the schema level by users or experts
•  Specification of a portion of a hierarchy by
explicit data grouping
•  Specification of a set of attributes, but not of
their partial ordering
•  Specification of only a partial set of attributes
Specification of a set of attributes

Concept hierarchy can be automatically generated

based on the number of distinct values per attribute in
the given attribute set. The attribute with the most
distinct values is placed at the lowest level of the
hierarchy.

country 15 distinct values

province_or_ state 65 distinct values

city 3567 distinct values

street 674,339 distinct values

 Summary
•  Data preparation and preprocessing is a big
issue for learning, data mining
•  Data preprocessing includes
–  Data cleaning and data integration
–  Data reduction and attributes selection
–  Discretization

•  A lot a methods have been developed but still

an active area of research
Learning Process