h apter

C
7 Understanding Data

“Data is not information, Information

is not knowledge, Knowledge is not
understanding, Understanding is not
wisdom.”
— Gary Schubert

In this Chapter
»» Introduction to Data
»» Data Collection
»» Data Storage
7.1 Introduction to Data
»» Data Processing Many a time, people take decisions based on
certain data or information. For example, while
»» Statistical Techniques for
Data Processing choosing a college for getting admission, one looks
at placement data of previous years of that college,
educational qualification and experience of the
faculty members, laboratory and hostel facilities,
fees, etc. So we can say that identification of a
college is based on various data and their analysis.
Governments systematically collect and record
data about the population through a process
called census. Census data contains valuable
information which are helpful is planning and
formulating policies. Likewise, the coaching staff
of a sports team analyses previous performances
of opponent teams for making strategies. Banks
maintain data about the customers, their account
details and transactions. All these examples
highlight the need of data in various fields. Data
are indeed crucial for decision making.

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 In the previous examples, one cannot make decisions
by looking at the data itself. In our example of choosing
a college, suppose the placement cell of the college has
maintained data of about 2000 students placed with
different companies at different salary packages in the
last 3 years. Looking at such data, one cannot make
any remark about the placement of students of that
college. The college processes and analyses this data
and the results are given in the placement brochure of
the college through summarisation as well as visuals for
easy understanding. Hence, data need to be gathered,
processed and analysed for making decisions.
In general, data is a collection of characters, numbers,
A knowledge base is and other symbols that represents values of some
a store of information situations or variables. Data is plural and singular of the
consisting of facts,
assumptions and
word data is “datum”. Using computers, data are stored
rules which an AI in electronic forms because data processing becomes
system can use for faster and easier as compared to manual data processing
decision making. done by people. The Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) revolution led by computer, mobile and
Internet has resulted in generation of large volume of
data and at a very fast pace. The following list contains
some examples of data that we often come across.
• Name, age, gender, contact details, etc., of a person
• Transactions data generated through banking,
ticketing, shopping, etc. whether online or offline
• Images, graphics, animations, audio, video
• Documents and web pages
• Online posts, comments and messages
• Signals generated by sensors
• Satellite data including meteorological data,
communication data, earth observation data, etc.

7.1.1 Importance of Data

Human beings rely on data for making decisions.
Besides, large amount of data when processed with the
help of a computer, show us the possibilities or hidden
traits which are otherwise not visible to humans. When
one withdraws money from ATM, the bank needs to debit
the withdrawn amount from the linked account. So the
bank needs to maintain data and update it as and when
required. The meteorological offices continuously keep
on monitoring satellite data for any upcoming cyclone
or heavy rain.

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 In a competitive business environment, it is important Notes
for business organisations to continuously monitor and
analyse market behaviour with respect to their products
and take actions accordingly. Besides, companies
identify customer demands as well as feedbacks, and
make changes in their products or services accordingly.
The dynamic pricing concept used by airlines and
railway is another example where they decide the price
based on relationships between demand and supply.
The cab booking Apps increase or decrease the price
based on demand for cabs at a particular time. Certain
restaurants offer discounted price (called happy hours),
they decide when and how much discount to offer by
analysing sales data at different time periods.
Besides business, following are some other scenarios
where data are also stored and analysed for making
decisions:
• The electronic voting machines are used for recording
the votes cast. Subsequently, the voting data from
all the machines are accumulated to declare election
results in a short time as compared to manual
counting of ballot papers.
• Scientists record data while doing experiments to
calculate and compare results.
• Pharmaceutical companies record data while trying
out a new medicine to see its effectiveness.
• Libraries maintain data about books in the library
and the membership of the library.
• The search engines give us results after analysing
large volume of data available on the websites across
World Wide Web (www).
• Weather alerts are generated by analysing data
received from various satellites.
7.1.2 Types of Data
As data come from different sources, they can be in
different formats. For example, an image is a collection
of pixels; a video is made up of frames; a fee slip is
made up of few numeric and non-numeric entries; and
messages/chats are made up of texts, icons (emoticons)
and images/videos. Two broad categories in which data
can be classified on the basis of their format are:
(A) Structured Data
Data which is organised and can be recorded in a well
defined format is called structured data. Structured

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 Activity 7.1 data is usually stored in computer in a tabular (in rows
Observe Voter Identity and columns) format where each column represents
cards of your family different data for a particular parameter called attribute/
members and identify characteristic/variable and each row represents data of
the data fields under an observation for different attributes. Table 7.1 shows
which data are
structured data related to an inventory of kitchen items
organised. Are
they same for maintained by a shop.
all?

Table 7.1 Structured data about kitchen items in a shop

ModelNo ProductName Unit Price Discount(%) Items_in_Inventory
ABC1 Water bottle 126 8 13
ABC2 Melamine Plates 320 5 45
ABC3 Dinner Set 4200 10 8
GH67 Jug 80 0 10
GH78 Table Spoon 120 5 14
GH81 Bucket 190 12 6
NK2 Kitchen Towel 25 0 32

Given this data, using a spreadsheet or other such

software, the shop owner can find out how many total
items are there by summing the column Items_in_
Inventory of Table 7.1 The owner of the shop can also
calculate the total value of all items in the inventory
by multiplying each entry of column 3 (Unit Price) with
corresponding entry of column 5 (Items_in_Inventory)
and finding their sum.
Table 7.2 shows more examples of structured data
recorded for different attributes.
Table 7.2 Attributes maintained for different activities
Entity/Activities Data Fields/Parameters/Attributes
Books at a shop BookTitle, Author, Price, YearofPublication
Depositing fees in a school StudentName, Class, RollNo, FeesAmount, DepositDate
Amount withdrawal from ATM AccHolderName, AccountNo, TypeofAcc, DateofWithdrawal,
AmountWithdrawn, ATMid, TimeOfWithdrawal

(B) Unstructured Data

A newspaper contains various types of news items
which are also called data. But there is no fixed pattern
that a newspaper follows in placing news articles. One
day there might be three images of different sizes on
a page along with five news items and one or more
advertisements. While on another day there, might be
one big image with three textual news items. So there is

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 no particular format nor any fixed structure for printing
news. Another example is the content of an email.
There is no fixed structure about how many lines or
paragraphs one has to write in an email or how many
files are to be attached with an email. In summary,
data which are not in the traditional row and column
structure is called unstructured data.
Examples of unstructured data include web pages
consisting of text as well as multimedia contents
(image, graphics, audio/video). Other examples include
When we click a
text documents, business reports, books, audio/video photograph using
files, social media messages. Although there are ways our digital or mobile
to process unstructured data, we are going to focus on camera, does it have
handling structured data only in this book. some metadata
associated with it?
Unstructured data are sometimes described with
the help of some other data called metadata. Metadata
is basically data about data. For example, we describe
different parts of an email as subject, recipient, main
body, attachment, etc. These are the metadata for the
email data. Likewise, we can have some metadata for an
image file as image size (in KB or MB), image type (for
example, JPEG, PNG), image resolution, etc.

7.2 Data Collection

For processing data, we need to collect or gather data
first. We can then store the data in a file or database
for later use. Data collection here means identifying
already available data or collecting from the appropriate
sources. Suppose there are three different scenarios
where sales data in a grocery store are available:
• Sales data are available with the shopkeeper in a
diary or register. In this case we should enter the
data in a digital format for example, in a spreadsheet.
• Data are already available in a digital format, say in
a CSV (comma separated values) file.
• The shopkeeper has so far not recorded any data in
either form but wants to get a software developed for
maintaining sales data and accounts. The software
may be developed using a programming language
such as Python which can be used to store and retrieve
data from a CSV file or a database management
system like MySQL, which will be discussed further.

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 Data are continuously being generated at different
sources. Our interactions with digital medium are
continuously generating huge volumes of data. Hospitals
are collecting data about patients for improving their
services. Shopping malls are collecting data about the
items being purchased by people. On analysing such
data, suppose it appears that bedsheets and groceries
are frequently bought together. Hence, the shop owner
may decide to display bedsheets near the grocery section
Identify attributes in the mall to increase the sales. Likewise, a political
needed for creating analyst may look at the data contained in the posts and
an Aadhaar Card. messages at a social media platform and analyse to see
public opinion before an election. Organisations like
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are
collecting data related to various economic parameters
from different countries for making economic forecasts.

7.3 Data Storage

Once we gather data and process them to get results, we
may not then simply discard the data. Rather, we would
like to store them for future use as well. Data storage
is the process of storing data on storage devices so that
data can be retrieved later. Now a days large volume of
data are being generated at a very high rate. As a result,
data storage has become a challenging task. However,
the decrease in the cost of digital storage devices has
helped in simplifying this task. There are numerous
digital storage devices available in the market like, Hard
Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD), CD/DVD,
Tape Drive, Pen Drive, Memory Card, etc.
We store data like images, documents, audios/
videos, etc. as files in our computers. Likewise, school/
Is it necessary to hospital data are stored in data files. We use computers
store data in files
before processing? to add, modify or delete data in these files or process
these data files to get results. However, file processing
has certain limitations, which can be overcome through
Database Management System (DBMS).

7.4 Data Processing

We are interested in understanding data as they hold
valuable facts and information that can be useful in
our decision making process. However, by looking at
the vast or large amount of data, one cannot arrive
at a conclusion. Rather, data need to be processed to

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 get results and after
analysing those results, RAW DATA Data Processing
INFORMATION
(In the form
we make conclusions or (Numbers/
of table/
Text/Image)
decisions. chart/text)
We find automated
data processing in
Data Process Cycle
situations like online bill
payment, registration Input Processing Output
of complaints, booking Data Collection Store Reports
tickets, etc. Figure 7.1 Data Prepration Retrieve Results
illustrates basic steps Data Entry Classify Processing System
used to process the data Update
to get the output.
Figure 7.1: Steps in data processing
Figure 7.2 shows
some tasks along with data, processing and generated
output/information.

7.5 Statistical Techniques for Data Processing

Given a set of data values, we need to process them to get
information. There are various techniques which help
us to have preliminary understanding about the data.

A website
A website handling
handling online
online filling
filling of
of student
student details
details for
for a
a competitive
competitive examination
examination and
and generating
generating admit
admit card
card

Student details like name, address, Processing of filled in details for

qualification, marks, mobile correctness of data received,
number, photo and sign, center eligibility as per advertisement or Examination Admit card specifying
choice, online fee payment details not, fees paid or not, photo and roll number, center address, date
like credit/debit card, net banking signature uploaded or not. Then, and time of test.
or other mode of payment, etc. generate a roll number and add this
applicant in the list of eligible
applicants.

A Bank handling withdrawals of cash through ATMs of its own branch

ATM PIN number, account type, Checking for valid PIN number,
account number, card number, existing bank balance, if satisfied, Currency notes, printed slip with
ATM location from where money then deduction of amount from that transaction details
was withdrawn, date and time, and account and counting of rupees and
amount to be withdrawn. initiate printing of receipt

Issue
Issue of
of train
train ticket
ticket

Journey start and end stations, Verify login details and check
date of journey, number of tickets availability of berth in that class. If
required, class of travel payment done, issue tickets and Generate ticket with berth and
(Sleeper/AC/other), berth deduct that number from the total coach number, or issue ticket with
preference (if any), passenger available tickets on that coach. a waiting list number
name(s) and age(s), mobile and Allocate PNR number and berths or
email id, payment related details, generate a waiting number for that
etc. ticket.

Problem Statement Inputs against which Processing Output

data are collected
Figure 7.2: Data based problem statements

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 Notes Summarisation methods are applied on tabular data
for its easy comprehension. Commonly used statistical
techniques for data summarisation are given below:
7.5.1 Measures of Central Tendency
A measure of central tendency is a single value that
gives us some idea about the data. Three most common
measures of central tendency are the mean, median,
and mode. Instead of looking at each individual data
values, we can calculate the mean, median and mode
of the data to get an idea about average, middle value
and frequency of occurrence of a particular value,
respectively. Selection of a measure of central tendency
depends on certain characteristics of data.
(A) Mean
Mean is simply the average of numeric values of an
attribute. Mean is also called average. Suppose there
are data on weight of 40 students in a class. Instead
of looking at each of the data values, we can calculate
the average to get an idea about the average weight of
students in that class.
Definition: Given n values x1, x2, x3,...xn, mean is
n
computed as xi .
i
n
Example 7.1
Assume that height (in cm) of students in a class are as
follows [90,102,110,115,85,90,100,110,110]. Mean or
average height of the class is

Mean is not a suitable choice if there are outliers

in the data. To calculate mean, the outliers or extreme
values should be removed from the given data and then
calculate mean of the remaining data.
Note: An outlier is an exceptionally large or small value, in
comparison to other values of the data. Usually, outliers are
considered as error since they can influence/affect the average or
other statistical calculation based on the data.
(B) Median
Median is also computed for a single attribute/variable
at a time. When all the values are sorted in ascending or
descending order, the middle value is called the Median.
When there are odd number of values, then median is

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 the value at the middle position. If the list has even
number of values, then median is the average of the two
middle values. Median represents the central value at
which the given data is equally divided into two parts.
Example 7.2
Consider the previous data of height of students used
in calculation of mean value. In order to compute the
median, the first step is to sort data in ascending or
descending order. We have sorted the height data in
ascending order as [85,90,90,100,102,110,110,110,
115]. As there are total 9 values (odd number), the
median is the value at position 5, that is 102 cm, Out of Mean and
whether counted from left to right or from right to left. Median, which one
Median represents the actual central value at which the is more sensitive to
given data is equally divided into two parts. outliers in data?

(C) Mode
Value that appears most number of times in the given
data of an attribute/variable is called Mode. It is
computed on the basis of frequency of occurrence of
distinct values in the given data. A data set has no mode
if each value occurs only once. There may be multiple
modes in the data if more than one values have same
highest frequency. Mode can be found for numeric as
well as non-numeric data.
Example 7.3
In the list of height of students, mode is 110 as its
frequency of occurrence in the list is 3, which is larger
than the frequency of rest of the values.
7.5.2 Measures of Variability
The measures of variability refer to the spread or variation
of the values around the mean. They are also called
measures of dispersion that indicate the degree of diversity
in a data set. They also indicate difference within the group.
Two different data sets can have the same mean, median
or mode but completely different levels of dispersion, or
vice versa. Common measures of dispersion or variability
are Range and Standard Deviation.
(A) Range
It is the difference between maximum and minimum
values of the data (the largest value minus the
smallest value). Range can be calculated only for
numerical data. It is a measure of dispersion and
tells about coverage/spread of data values. For

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 example difference in salaries of employees, marks of
a student, price of toys, etc. As range is calculated
based on the two extreme values, any outlier in the
data badly influences the result.
Let M be the largest or maximum value and S is the
smallest or minimum value in the data, then Range is
the difference between two extreme values i.e. M – S or
Maximum – Minimum.
Example 7.4
In the above example, minimum hight value is 85 cm
and maximum hight value is 115 cm. Hence, range is
115-85 = 30 cm.
(B) Standard deviation
Standard deviation refers to differences within the group
or set of data of a variable. Like Range, it also measures
the spread of data. However, unlike Range which only
uses two extreme values in the data, calculation of
standard deviation considers all the given data. It is
calculated as the positive square root of the average of
squared difference of each value from the mean value
of data. Smaller value of standard deviation means
data are less spread while a larger value of standard
deviation means data are more spread.
Given n values x1, x2, x3,...xn, and their mean x, the
standard deviation, represented as σ (greek letter sigma)
is computed as
n
(X i − X )2
σ= i =1

Example 7.5
Let us compute the standard deviation of the height
of nine students that we used while calculating
Mean. The Mean (x) was calculated to be 101.33 cm.
Subtract each value from the mean and take square
of that value. Dividing the sum of square values by
total number of values and taking its square not
gives the standard deviation in data. See Table 7.3
for details.
Table 7.3 Standard deviation of attendance of 9 students
_ _
Height (x) in cm x_x (x _ x )2
90 -11.33 128.37 n
(X i − X )2
102 0.67 0.36 = i =1
n
110 8.67 75.17
115 13.67 186.87

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 85 -16.33 266.67
90 -11.33 128.37
n
100 -1.33 1.77 (X i − X )2
110 8.67 75.17 σ= i =1

n
110 8.67 75.17
_ _2
n=9 ∑(x-x) = 0.03 ∑(x-x) = 938.00
_
x =101.33

Let us look at the following problems and select

the suitable statistical technique to be applied (Mean/
Median/Mode/Range/Standard Deviation):
Choose suitable
Problem Statement
statistical method
The management of a company wants to know about disparity in salaries of
all employees.

Teacher wants to know about the average performance of the whole class in
a test.
Compare height of residents of two cities

Find the dominant value from a set of values

Compare income of residents of two cities

Find the popular color for car after surveying the car owners of a small city.

It is important to understand statistical techniques

so that one can decide which statistical technique to
use to arrive at a decision. Different programming tools
are available for efficient analysis of large volumes of
data. These tools make use of statistical techniques for
data analysis. One such programming tool is Python
and it has libraries specially built for data processing
and analysis. We will be covering some of them in the
following chapters.

Summary
• Data refer to unorganised facts that can be
processed to generate meaningful result or
information.
• Data can be structured or unstructured.
• Hard Disk, SSD, CD/DVD, Pen Drive, Memory
Card, etc. are some of the commonly used storage
devices.

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 Notes • Data Processing cycle involves input and storage
of data, its processing and generating output.
• Summarising data using statistical techniques
aids in revealing data characteristics.
• Mean, Median, Mode, Range, and Standard
Deviation are some of the statistical techniques
used for data summarisation.
• Mean is the average of given values.
• Median is the mid value when data are sorted in
ascending/descending order.
• Mode is the data value that appears most number
of times.
• Range is the difference between the maximum
and minimum values.
• Standard deviation is the positive square root of
the average of squared difference of each value
from the mean.

Exercise
1. Identify data required to be maintained to perform the
following services:
a) Declare exam results and print e-certificates
b) Register participants in an exhibition and issue
biometric ID cards
c) To search for an image by a search engine
d) To book an OPD appointment with a hospital in a
specific department
2. A school having 500 students wants to identify
beneficiaries of the merit-cum means scholarship,
achieving more than 75% for two consecutive years
and having family income less than 5 lakh per annum.
Briefly describe data processing steps to be taken by the
to beneficial prepare the list of school.
3. A bank ‘xyz’ wants to know about its popularity among
the residents of a city ‘ABC’ on the basis of number of
bank accounts each family has and the average monthly
account balance of each person. Briefly describe the
steps to be taken for collecting data and what results
can be checked through processing of the collected data.

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 4. Identify type of data being collected/generated in the Notes
following scenarios:
a) Recording a video
b) Marking attendance by teacher
c) Writing tweets
d) Filling an application form online

5. Consider the temperature (in Celsius) of 7 days of a week

as 34, 34, 27, 28, 27, 34, 34. Identify the appropriate
statistical technique to be used to calculate the following:
a) Find the average temperature.
b) Find the temperature Range of that week.
c) Find the standard deviation temperature.
6. A school teacher wants to analyse results. Identify the
appropriate statistical technique to be used along with
its justification for the following cases:
a) Teacher wants to compare performance in terms of
division secured by students in Class XII A and Class
XII B where each class strength is same.
b) Teacher has conducted five unit tests for that class in
months July to November and wants to compare the
class performance in these five months.
7. Suppose annual day of your school is to be celebrated.
The school has decided to felicitate those parents of the
students studying in classes XI and XII, who are the
alumni of the same school. In this context, answer the
following questions:
a) Which statistical technique should be used to find
out the number of students whose both parents are
alumni of this school?
b) How varied are the age of parents of the students of
that school?
8. For the annual day celebrations, the teacher is looking
for an anchor in a class of 42 students. The teacher would
make selection of an anchor on the basis of singing skill,
writing skill, as well as monitoring skill.
a) Which mode of data collection should be used?
b) How would you represent the skill of students as
data?
9. Differentiate between structured and unstructured data
giving one example.
The principal of a school wants to do following analysis
on the basis of food items procured and sold in the
canteen:
a) Compare the purchase and sale price of fruit juice
and biscuits.

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 Notes b) Compare sales of fruit juice, biscuits and samosa.
c) Variation in sale price of fruit juices of different
companies for same quantity (in ml).
Create an appropriate dataset for these items (fruit juice,
biscuits, samosa) by listing their purchase price and
sale price. Apply basic statistical techniques to make
the comparisons.

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