Chapter 2 - ABOUT DATA

► Data Objects and Attribute Types

► Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data
► Data Visualization
► Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity
► Summary

►1
Types of Data Sets
► Record
► Relational records
► Data matrix, e.g., numerical matrix, crosstabs
► Document data: text documents: term-frequency
vector
► Transaction data
► Graph and network
► World Wide Web
► Social or information networks
► Molecular Structures
► Ordered
► Video data: sequence of images
► Temporal data: time-series
► Sequential Data: transaction sequences
► Genetic sequence data
► Spatial, image and multimedia:
► Spatial data: maps
► Image data:
► Video data:
2
Important Characteristics of Structured Data

► Dimensionality
► Curse of dimensionality

► Sparsity
► Only presence counts

► Resolution

► Patterns depend on the scale

► Distribution
► Centrality and dispersion

3
 Data Objects - Description
► Data sets are made up of data objects.
► A data object represents an entity.
► Examples:
► sales database: customers, store items, sales
► medical database: patients, treatments
► university database: students, professors, courses
► Also called samples , examples, instances, data points,
objects, tuples.
► Data objects are described by attributes.
► Database rows -> data objects; columns ->attributes.
4
 Attributes
► Attribute (or dimensions, features, variables): a data field, representing a
characteristic or feature of a data object.
► E.g., customer _ID, name, address

► Types:
► Nominal
► Binary
► Ordinal
► Numeric: quantitative
► Interval-scaled
► Ratio-scaled
► Discrete Vs Continous
5
 Attribute Types
► Nominal/Categorical : categories, states, or “names of things”
► Hair_color = {auburn, black, blond, brown, grey, red, white}
► marital status, zip codes
► There is no meaningful order - enumerations
► Binary
► Nominal attribute with only 2 states (0 and 1)
► Symmetric binary: both outcomes equally important
► e.g., gender
► Asymmetric binary: outcomes not equally important.
► e.g., medical test (positive vs. negative)
► Convention: assign 1 to most important outcome (e.g., Flu
positive)
► Ordinal
► Values have a meaningful order (ranking) but magnitude between
successive values is not known.
► Size = {small, medium, large}, grades, army rankings6
 Numeric Attribute Types
► Quantity (integer or real-valued)
► Interval-Scaled
► Measured on a scale of equal-sized units
► Values have order
► E.g., year, temperature in C˚or F˚, calendar
dates
► No true zero-point, can be compared.
► Ratio
► Inherent zero-point
► We can speak of values as being an order of
magnitude larger than the unit of measurement
► e.g., Experience, length, counts, monetary
7

quantities
 Discrete vs. Continuous Attributes
► Discrete Attribute
► Has only a finite or countably infinite set of values
► E.g., zip codes, profession, or the set of words in a collection of documents

► Sometimes, represented as integer variables

► Note: Binary attributes are a special case of discrete
attributes
► Continuous Attribute
► Has real numbers as attribute values
► E.g., temperature, height, or weight

► Practically, real values can only be measured and

represented using a finite number of digits
► Continuous attributes are typically represented as
floating-point variables 8
Chapter 2: ABOUT DATA

► Data Objects and Attribute Types

► Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

► Data Visualization

► Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

► Summary

9
Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data
► Motivation
► To better understand the data: central tendency,
variation and spread
► Data dispersion characteristics
► median, max, min, quantiles, outliers, variance, etc.
► Numerical dimensions correspond to sorted intervals
► Data dispersion: analyzed with multiple granularities
of precision
► Boxplot or quantile analysis on sorted intervals
► Dispersion analysis on computed measures
► Folding measures into numerical dimensions
► Boxplot or quantile analysis on the transformed
10
cube
Measuring the Central Tendency
► Mean (algebraic measure) (sample vs. population):
Note: n is sample size and N is population size.
► Weighted arithmetic mean:
► Trimmed mean: chopping extreme values
► Median:
► Middle value if odd number of values, or average of the middle
two values otherwise
► Estimated by interpolation (for grouped data):

► Mode
► Value that occurs most frequently in the data
► Unimodal, bimodal, trimodal
► Empirical formula:

11
 Symmetric vs. Skewed Data

► Median, mean and mode of symmetric

symmetric, positively and negatively
skewed data

positively skewed negatively skewed

12

*Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

Measuring the Dispersion of Data
► Quartiles, outliers and boxplots
► Quartiles: Q1 (25th percentile), Q3 (75th percentile)
► Inter-quartile range: IQR = Q3 – Q1
► Five number summary: min, Q1, median, Q3, max
► Boxplot: ends of the box are the quartiles; median is marked; add whiskers,
and plot outliers individually
► Outlier: usually, a value higher/lower than 1.5 x IQR
► Variance and standard deviation (sample: s, population: σ)
► Variance: (algebraic, scalable computation)

► Standard deviation s (or σ) is the square root of variance s2 (or σ2)

13
Boxplot Analysis

► Five-number summary of a distribution

► Minimum, Q1, Median, Q3, Maximum
► Boxplot
► Data is represented with a box
► The ends of the box are at the first and third
quartiles, i.e., the height of the box is IQR
► The median is marked by a line within the
box
► Whiskers: two lines outside the box
extended to Minimum and Maximum
► Outliers: points beyond a specified outlier
threshold, plotted individually 14
Visualization of Data Dispersion: 3-D Boxplots

15

* Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

Properties of Normal Distribution Curve

► The normal (distribution) curve

► From μ–σ to μ+σ: contains about 68% of the
measurements (μ: mean, σ: standard deviation)
► From μ–2σ to μ+2σ: contains about 95% of it
► From μ–3σ to μ+3σ: contains about 99.7% of it

16
Graphic Displays of Basic Statistical Descriptions

► Boxplot: graphic display of five-number summary

► Histogram: x-axis are values, y-axis repres. frequencies

► Quantile plot: each value xi is paired with fi indicating

that approximately 100 fi % of data are ≤ xi

► Quantile-quantile (q-q) plot: graphs the quantiles of one

univariant distribution against the corresponding quantiles
of another

► Scatter plot: each pair of values is a pair of coordinates

and plotted as points in the plane

17
Histogram Analysis

► Histogram: Graph display of

tabulated frequencies, shown as
bars
► It shows what proportion of cases
fall into each of several categories
► Differs from a bar chart in that it is
the area of the bar that denotes
the value, not the height as in bar
charts, a crucial distinction when
the categories are not of uniform
width
► The categories are usually specified
as non-overlapping intervals of
some variable. The categories
(bars) must be adjacent 18
Histograms Often Tell More than Boxplots

■ The two histograms

shown in the left may
have the same boxplot
representation
■ The same values
for: min, Q1,
median, Q3, max
■ But they have rather
different data
distributions

19
 Quantile Plot
► Displays all of the data (allowing the user to assess both
the overall behavior and unusual occurrences)
► Plots quantile information
► For a data xi data sorted in increasing order, fi
indicates that approximately 100 fi% of the data are
below or equal to the value xi

20

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

 Quantile-Quantile (Q-Q) Plot
► Graphs the quantiles of one univariate distribution against the
corresponding quantiles of another
► View: Is there is a shift in going from one distribution to another?
► Example shows unit price of items sold at Branch 1 vs. Branch 2 for
each quantile. Unit prices of items sold at Branch 1 tend to be
lower than those at Branch 2.

21
 Scatter plot
► Provides a first look at bivariate data to see clusters of
points, outliers, etc
► Each pair of values is treated as a pair of coordinates
and plotted as points in the plane

22
Positively and Negatively Correlated Data

► The left half fragment is positively

correlated

► The right half is negative correlated

23
Uncorrelated Data

24
Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your Data

► Data Objects and Attribute Types

► Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

► Data Visualization

► Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

► Summary

25
Data Visualization
► Why data visualization?
► Gain insight into an information space by mapping data onto graphical
primitives
► Provide qualitative overview of large data sets
► Search for patterns, trends, structure, irregularities, relationships among data
► Help find interesting regions and suitable parameters for further quantitative
analysis
► Provide a visual proof of computer representations derived
► Categorization of visualization methods:
► Pixel-oriented visualization techniques
► Geometric projection visualization techniques
► Icon-based visualization techniques
► Hierarchical visualization techniques
► Visualizing complex data and relations
26
Pixel-Oriented Visualization Techniques
► For a data set of m dimensions, create m windows on the screen, one
for each dimension
► The m dimension values of a record are mapped to m pixels at the
corresponding positions in the windows
► The colors of the pixels reflect the corresponding values

(a) Income (b) Credit Limit (c) transaction volume (d) age
27
Laying Out Pixels in Circle Segments

► To save space and show the connections among multiple dimensions,

space filling is often done in a circle segment

(a) Representing a data record

(b) Laying out pixels in circle segment
in circle segment
28
 Geometric Projection
► Visualization Techniques
Visualization of geometric transformations and
projections of the data
► Methods
► Direct visualization
► Scatterplot and scatterplot matrices
► Landscapes
► Projection pursuit technique: Help users find
meaningful projections of multidimensional data
► Prosection views
► Hyperslice
► Parallel coordinates 29
 Direct Data Visualization
Ribbons with Twists Based on Vorticity

30

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

Scatterplot Matrices

Used by ermission of M. Ward, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

31
Matrix of scatterplots (x-y-diagrams) of the k-dim. data [total of (k2/2-k) scatterplots]
 Landscapes
Used by permission of B. Wright, Visible Decisions Inc.

news articles
visualized as
a landscape

► Visualization of the data as perspective landscape

► The data needs to be transformed into a (possibly artificial) 2D spatial
32
representation which preserves the characteristics of the data
 Parallel Coordinates
► n equidistant axes which are parallel to one of the screen axes and
correspond to the attributes
► The axes are scaled to the [minimum, maximum]: range of the
corresponding attribute
► Every data item corresponds to a polygonal line which intersects
each of the axes at the point which corresponds to the value for the
attribute

33
Parallel Coordinates of a Data Set

34
 Icon-Based Visualization
►
Techniques
Visualization of the data values as features of icons
► Typical visualization methods
► Chernoff Faces
► Stick Figures
► General techniques
► Shape coding: Use shape to represent certain information
encoding
► Color icons: Use color icons to encode more information
► Tile bars: Use small icons to represent the relevant feature
vectors in document retrieval
35
 Chernoff Faces
► A way to display variables on a two-dimensional surface, e.g., let x be
eyebrow slant, y be eye size, z be nose length, etc.
► The figure shows faces produced using 10 characteristics--head
eccentricity, eye size, eye spacing, eye eccentricity, pupil size, eyebrow
slant, nose size, mouth shape, mouth size, and mouth opening): Each
assigned one of 10 possible values, generated using Mathematica (S.
Dickson)

► REFERENCE: Gonick, L. and Smith, W. The

Cartoon Guide to Statistics. New York:
Harper Perennial, p. 212, 1993
► Weisstein, Eric W. "Chernoff Face." From
MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource.
mathworld.wolfram.com/ChernoffFace.html 36
Stick Figure

A census data
figure showing
age, income,
at Lowell

gender,
used by permission of G. Grinstein, University of Massachusettes

education, etc.

A 5-piece stick
figure (1 body
and 4 limbs w.
different
37 angle/length)

Two attributes mapped to axes, remaining attributes mapped to angle or length of limbs”. Look at texture pattern
Hierarchical Visualization
Techniques

► Visualization of the data using a hierarchical

partitioning into subspaces
► Methods
► Dimensional Stacking
► Worlds-within-Worlds
► Tree-Map
► Cone Trees
► InfoCube

38
 Dimensional Stacking

► Partitioning of the n-dimensional attribute space in 2-D

subspaces, which are ‘stacked’ into each other
► Partitioning of the attribute value ranges into classes. The
important attributes should be used on the outer levels.
► Adequate for data with ordinal attributes of low cardinality
► But, difficult to display more than nine dimensions
► Important to map dimensions appropriately 39
Dimensional Stacking
Used by permission of M. Ward, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Visualization of oil mining data with longitude and latitude mapped to the
outer x-, y-axes and ore grade and depth mapped to the40inner x-, y-axes
 Worlds-within-Worlds
► Assign the function and two most important parameters to innermost
world
► Fix all other parameters at constant values - draw other (1 or 2 or 3
dimensional worlds choosing these as the axes)
► Software that uses this paradigm
► N–vision: Dynamic
interaction through data
glove and stereo
displays, including
rotation, scaling (inner)
and translation
(inner/outer)
► Auto Visual: Static
interaction by means of
queries
41
 Tree-Map
► Screen-filling method which uses a hierarchical partitioning of
the screen into regions depending on the attribute values
► The x- and y-dimension of the screen are partitioned
alternately according to the attribute values (classes)

MSR Netscan Image

42

Ack.: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/all102001.jpg
Tree-Map of a File System
(Schneiderman)

43
 InfoCube
► A 3-D visualization technique where hierarchical information is displayed as
nested semi-transparent cubes
► The outermost cubes correspond to the top level data, while the subnodes or
the lower level data are represented as smaller cubes inside the outermost
cubes, and so on

44
Three-D Cone Trees

► 3D cone tree visualization technique works

well for up to a thousand nodes or so
► First build a 2D circle tree that arranges
its nodes in concentric circles centered on
the root node
► Cannot avoid overlaps when projected to
2D
► G. Robertson, J. Mackinlay, S. Card.
“Cone Trees: Animated 3D Visualizations
of Hierarchical Information”, ACM
SIGCHI'91
► Graph from Nadeau Software Consulting
website: Visualize a social network data
set that models the way an infection
spreads from one person to the next 45

Ack.: http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/visualization
 Visualizing Complex Data and
► Relations
Visualizing non-numerical data: text and social networks
► Tag cloud: visualizing user-generated tags
■ The importance of
tag is represented
by font size/color
■ Besides text data,
there are also
methods to visualize
relationships, such as
visualizing social
networks

Newsmap: Google News Stories in 2005

 Chapter 2: ABOUT DATA

► Data Objects and Attribute Types

► Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

► Data Visualization

► Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

► Summary

47
 Similarity and Dissimilarity
► Similarity
► Numerical measure of how alike two data objects are
► Value is higher when objects are more alike
► Often falls in the range [0,1]
► Dissimilarity (e.g., distance)
► Numerical measure of how different two data objects
are
► Lower when objects are more alike
► Minimum dissimilarity is often 0
► Upper limit varies
► Proximity refers to a similarity or dissimilarity
48
 Data Matrix and Dissimilarity Matrix

► Data matrix
► n data points with p
dimensions
► Two modes

► Dissimilarity matrix
► n data points, but
registers only the
distance
► A triangular
matrix/Symmetric
matrix
► Single mode
49
Proximity Measure for Nominal Attributes

► Can take 2 or more states, e.g., red, yellow, blue, green (generalization of a
binary attribute)
► Method 1: Simple matching
► m: # of matches, p: total # of variables

► Method 2: Use a large number of binary attributes

► creating a new binary attribute for each of the M nominal states

50
 Proximity Measure for Binary Attributes
Object j
► A contingency table for binary data
Object i

► Distance measure for symmetric

binary variables:
► Distance measure for asymmetric
binary variables:
► Jaccard coefficient (similarity
measure for asymmetric binary
variables):

■ Note: Jaccard coefficient is the same as “coherence”:

51
Dissimilarity between Binary Variables

► Example

► Gender is a symmetric attribute

► The remaining attributes are asymmetric binary
► Let the values Y and P be 1, and the value N 0

52
Standardizing Numeric Data
► Z-score:
► X: raw score to be standardized, μ: mean of the population, σ:
standard deviation
► the distance between the raw score and the population mean in
units of the standard deviation
► negative when the raw score is below the mean, “+” when above
► An alternative way: Calculate the mean absolute deviation

where

► standardized measure (z-score):

► Using mean absolute deviation is more robust than using standard
deviation 53
Example:
Data Matrix and Dissimilarity Matrix
Data Matrix

Dissimilarity Matrix
(with Euclidean Distance)

54
Distance on Numeric Data: Minkowski Distance

► Minkowski distance: A popular distance measure

where i = (xi1, xi2, …, xip) and j = (xj1, xj2, …, xjp) are two
p-dimensional data objects, and h is the order (the
distance so defined is also called L-h norm)
► Properties
► d(i, j) > 0 if i ≠ j, and d(i, i) = 0 (Positive definiteness)
► d(i, j) = d(j, i) (Symmetry)
► d(i, j) ≤ d(i, k) + d(k, j) (Triangle Inequality)
► A distance that satisfies these properties is a metric
55
Special Cases of Minkowski Distance

► h = 1: Manhattan (city block, L1 norm) distance

► E.g., the Hamming distance: the number of bits that are
different between two binary vectors

► h = 2: (L2 norm) Euclidean distance

► h → ∞. “supremum” (Lmax norm, L∞ norm) distance.

► This is the maximum difference between any component
(attribute) of the vectors

56
Example: Minkowski Distance
Dissimilarity Matrices
Manhattan (L1)

Euclidean (L2)

Supremum

57
 Ordinal Variables

► An ordinal variable can be discrete or continuous

► Order is important, e.g., rank
► Can be treated like interval-scaled
► replace xif by their rank
► map the range of each variable onto [0, 1] by
replacing i-th object in the f-th variable by

► compute the dissimilarity using methods for

interval-scaled variables
58
Attributes of Mixed Type

► A database may contain all attribute types

► Nominal, symmetric binary, asymmetric binary,
numeric, ordinal
► One may use a weighted formula to combine their effects

► f is binary or nominal:
dij(f) = 0 if xif = xjf , or dij(f) = 1 otherwise

► f is numeric: use the normalized distance

► f is ordinal
► Compute ranks rif and
► Treat zif as interval-scaled
59
 Cosine Similarity

► A document can be represented by thousands of attributes, each recording

the frequency of a particular word (such as keywords) or phrase in the
document.

► Other vector objects: gene features in micro-arrays, …

► Applications: information retrieval, biologic taxonomy, gene feature
mapping, ...
► Cosine measure: If d1 and d2 are two vectors (e.g., term-frequency
vectors), then
cos(d1, d2) = (d1 ∙ d2) /||d1|| ||d2|| ,
where ∙ indicates vector dot product, ||d||: the length
60
of vector d
 Example: Cosine Similarity

► cos(d1, d2) = (d1 ∙ d2) /||d1|| ||d2|| ,

where ∙ indicates vector dot product, ||d|: the length of vector d

► Ex: Find the similarity between documents 1 and 2.

d1 = (5, 0, 3, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0)
d2 = (3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1)

d1∙d2 = 5*3+0*0+3*2+0*0+2*1+0*1+0*1+2*1+0*0+0*1 = 25
||d1||= (5*5+0*0+3*3+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0)0.5=(42)0.5 = 6.481
||d2||= (3*3+0*0+2*2+0*0+1*1+1*1+0*0+1*1+0*0+1*1)0.5=(17)0.5 =
4.12
cos(d1, d2 ) = 0.94
61
Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your Data

► Data Objects and Attribute Types

► Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

► Data Visualization

► Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

► Summary

62
Summary
► Data attribute types: nominal, binary, ordinal, interval-scaled,
ratio-scaled
► Many types of data sets, e.g., numerical, text, graph, Web, image.
► Gain insight into the data by:
► Basic statistical data description: central tendency, dispersion,
graphical displays
► Data visualization: map data onto graphical primitives
► Measure data similarity
► Above steps are the beginning of data preprocessing.
► Many methods have been developed but still an active area of
research.
63
 References
► W. Cleveland, Visualizing Data, Hobart Press, 1993
► T. Dasu and T. Johnson. Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning. John Wiley, 2003
► U. Fayyad, G. Grinstein, and A. Wierse. Information Visualization in Data Mining and
Knowledge Discovery, Morgan Kaufmann, 2001
► L. Kaufman and P. J. Rousseeuw. Finding Groups in Data: an Introduction to Cluster
Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, 1990.
► H. V. Jagadish, et al., Special Issue on Data Reduction Techniques. Bulletin of the Tech.
Committee on Data Eng., 20(4), Dec. 1997
► D. A. Keim. Information visualization and visual data mining, IEEE trans. on Visualization
and Computer Graphics, 8(1), 2002
► D. Pyle. Data Preparation for Data Mining. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999
► S. Santini and R. Jain,” Similarity measures”, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and
Machine Intelligence, 21(9), 1999
► E. R. Tufte. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd ed., Graphics Press,
2001
► C. Yu , et al., Visual data mining of multimedia data for social and behavioral studies,
Information Visualization, 8(1), 2009
64