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Principles of Data Literacy - Introduction To Data Cheatsheet - Codecademy

The document discusses key concepts in data literacy including data gaps, bias, statistics, categorical and quantitative variables, tidy and messy data. It provides examples and definitions for common types of missing data such as structurally missing, missing at random, and missing completely at random.

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61 views6 pages

Principles of Data Literacy - Introduction To Data Cheatsheet - Codecademy

The document discusses key concepts in data literacy including data gaps, bias, statistics, categorical and quantitative variables, tidy and messy data. It provides examples and definitions for common types of missing data such as structurally missing, missing at random, and missing completely at random.

Uploaded by

john.nstat
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cheatsheets / Principles of Data Literacy

Introduction to Data

Data Gaps
The ability to separate good, mediocre, and poor quality
data is a crucial data literacy skill. Data-driven
conclusions are only as strong, robust, and well-
supported as the data behind them. This is also often
referred to with the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.”

Addressing Bias
Bias in data collection leads to poorer quality data.
Recognizing bias in data is a crucial data literacy skill.
Some key questions about bias include “Who made the
data?”, “Who participated in the data?” and “Who is left
out of the data?”

What is Statistics?
Statistics helps to measure whether an event happens by
chance or by a systemic factor or factors. For example,
it’s statistically more likely to see traffic during peak rush
hour than outside of peak rush hour times.

Statistics at work
Statistics can reveal systemic patterns in a data set rather
than relying on individual experiences. This is important in
legal cases including those addressing discrimination or
class-action lawsuits.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
The quality of the predictions made during a predictive
analysis is deeply dependent on the quality of the data
used to generate the predictions.
For example, if a model is trained with mislabeled data, it
will produce inaccurate predictions no matter how good
the actual algorithm is. This is commonly referred to as,
“garbage in, garbage out.”

Binary Categorical Variables


Categorical variables can also be binary or dichotomous
variables. Binary variables are nominal categorical
variables that contain only two, mutually exclusive
categories. Examples of binary variables are if a person is
pregnant, or if a house’s price is above or below a
particular price.

Categorical Variables
Categorical variables consist of data that can be grouped
into distinct categories, and are ordinal or nominal.
Ordinal categorical variables which are groups that
contain an inherent ranking, such as ratings of plays or
responses to a survey question with a point scale e.g., on
a scale from 1-7, how happy are you right now? Nominal
categorical variables are made of categories without an
inherent order, examples of nominal variables are species
of ants, or people’s hair color.

Quantitative Vs. Categorical Variables


Variables can be either quantitative or categorical.
Quantitative variables are amounts or counts; for
example, age, number of children, and income are all
quantitative variables. Categorical variables represent
groupings; for example, type of pet, agreement rating, and
brand of shoes are all categorical variables.
Categorical Data Defined
Categorical Data refers to data represented by words
rather than numbers. Examples of categorical data are
tree species and survey responses (Agree, Neutral,
Disagree).

Ordinal and Nominal Categorical Data


Categorical variables can be either ordinal (ordered) or
nominal (unordered).
Examples of ordinal variables include places (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
and survey responses (on a scale of 1 to 5, how much do
you agree with a statement).
Examples of nominal variables include tree species,
student names, and account names.

Messy Data
Messy data is data that violates one of the tidy dataset
rules (1. Each variable forms a column; 2. Each
observation forms a row; 3. Each type of observational
unit forms a table).
Below is an example of messy data:

ID# Name ChemGrade2020 MathGrade2020 B

1 Brown F B

B smith
Saito,
3 A 90
K

Tabular Data
Tabular data is organized into rows, or observations, along
the vertical axis, and columns, also referred to as
variables or features, along the horizontal axis.
Row
Variable 1 Variable 2 Variable 3
#
1 Observation Observation Observation

2 Observation Observation Observation

3 Observation Observation Observation

Tidy Data Rules


A tidy dataset follows three fundamental rules:
1. Each variable forms a column.
2. Each observation forms a row.
3. Each type of observational unit forms a table.

Below is an example of a tidy dataset:

ID# Student Year Class Grade

1 Brown 2020 Chem F

1 Brown 2021 Chem B

1 Brown 2021 Math A

2 Smith 2020 Bio C

2 Smith 2021 CompSci B

3 Saito 2020 Chem A

3 Saito 2021 Math B

Sample Set of Data


A sample set of data is a dataset that is representative of
the entire population of interest. Random sampling is the
best way to make sure the sample is representative of the
whole population but does not guarantee a
representative sample, especially if the sample is too
small.

Structurally Missing Data


Structurally Missing Data is data that is expected to be
missing.
For example, there are structurally missing data in the
‘Litters’ and ‘Pups/Litter’ columns for all the male dogs in
the table below because we would not expect male dogs
to have puppies.

ID# Name Breed Sex Litters Pups/L

1 Gnasher ACD M

2 Cassie Collie F 1 3
French
3 Pepper F 4 2
Bulldog
Golden
4 Jed M
Retreiver
5 Henry Spaniel M

6 Ruby ACD F 1 6

Missing at Random Data


Missing at Random (MAR) data is missing because of some
random characteristic about the person or thing being
studied. Often, this type of data is reliably missing based
on the value of another variable in the dataset.
In the table below, the bacterial cell counts for all the
stool samples are ‘NaN’. If we looked into this, we might
find that there were too many bacterial cells to count in
all those samples. Therefore, the bacterial cell counts for
stool samples would be MAR data.
Sample Sample Bacterial Cell
ID Type Counts
1 Hand Swab 1008

2 Stool NaN

3 Mouth Swab 7876

4 Hand Swab 657

5 Stool NaN

6 Hand Swab 2442

7 Mouth Swab 5444

8 Stool NaN

9 Hand Swab 4654

10 Stool NaN
Data Missing Completely at Random
Dat Missing Completely at Random (MCAR) data has no
detectable underlying reason causing the values to be
missing.
The table below has MCAR data. The # of fruits is missing
for some plants, but the missing fruit data seems
unrelated to the height of the plant. Short and tall plants
are both missing fruit data. In addition, we are missing the
height for one of our plants!

Plant Height (cm) # of Fruits

1 65 10

2 87

3 987

4 44

5 105 35

6 547 74

7 876

8 55

9 875 95

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