IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

VTU - Rooman Internship 2024-25

Project Team Details

College Name: B. L. D. E. A's V. P. Dr. P. G. Halakatti College of Engineering and

Technology

Batch ID: 2753892(AI-Machine Learning)

Project Title: Real-Time Social Media Analytics Pipeline: Building a Robust Data
Processing Framework

Group Name: Group A22

Group Members:

Name: Bhagyashree S Patil

 CAN ID Number: CAN_33806693

Name: Bhagyashree S Bhairagond

 CAN ID Number: CAN_33846014

Name: Deepa B Patil

 CAN ID Number: CAN_ 33834957

Name: Gourishankar Mudhol

• CAN ID Number: CAN_33844810

1|Page
IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

Real-Time Social Media Analytics Pipeline: Building a

Robust Data Processing Framework

Phase 2: Data Preprocessing and Model Design

2.1 Overview of Data Preprocessing

The primary objective of this project's second phase is to complete the essential data
preprocessing tasks required to prepare the real-time social media analytics dataset for deep
learning. The first step in this process is data cleaning, which involves identifying and
resolving common problems such as missing values, outliers, and inconsistencies. Statistical
techniques and visualizations are employed to identify missing values, with appropriate
imputation or removal strategies used based on the nature of the data. Using boxplots and
statistical methods like the Z-score, outliers that could distort model outcomes are detected
and either capped or removed. Additionally, any discrepancies in the dataset, such as
duplicate entries or contradictory information, are eliminated to ensure data integrity.

After data cleaning, feature scaling and normalization are applied. These steps ensure that all
features are on a similar scale, which is crucial for deep learning models, as they are sensitive
to the scale of input features. Methods like min-max scaling and Z-score normalization are
used to standardize features and prevent those with larger magnitudes from dominating the
learning process. This ensures that the data is in the right format for efficient processing by
deep learning models, such as autoencoders, in the context of real-time social media
analytics.

To further enhance model efficiency and avoid overfitting, dimensionality reduction

techniques are employed. Methods like Principal Component Analysis (PCA) are used to
reduce the number of features while maintaining as much of the variance in the data as
possible. This helps prevent high-dimensional data from leading to overfitting and excessive
training times. Additionally, feature selection techniques like variance thresholding are
applied to remove repetitive or unnecessary features. By focusing on the most significant
patterns in the data, these preprocessing steps help to expedite the training process and
improve the model's ability to generalize, thus enhancing the overall efficiency of the real-
time social media analytics pipeline.

2|Page
IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

2.2 Data Cleaning: Handling Missing Values, Outliers, and Inconsistencies

To ensure that the data is reliable and ready for modeling, cleaning was a crucial step in this
phase. The following techniques were employed:

Missing Values:

Missing values can lead to biased results or model failures, impairing the model’s overall
performance. To handle missing values, the following methods were applied:

 Descriptive Statistics: We analyzed the data using measures like the mean and
median to identify trends and patterns in missing data.
 Heatmaps: Visualizing missing data through heatmaps allowed us to pinpoint areas
where imputation was required.

Strategies to Handle Missing Values:

 Imputation: For numerical features, we used the mean or median for imputation,
and for categorical features, we used the mode to fill in missing values.
 Removal: To maintain dataset integrity, we removed rows that had an excessive
number of missing values, ensuring that the imputation process didn’t distort the
analysis.

Outliers:

Outliers can significantly impact models, especially distance-based algorithms like K-means
or autoencoders. The following methods were used to identify and manage outliers:

 Boxplots: Boxplots were used to visually identify outliers in the dataset for each
feature.
 Z-Score Method: This statistical technique was employed to detect data points that
deviate significantly from the mean.

Strategies to Handle Outliers:

 Capping/Clipping: For extreme outliers, the Z-score threshold was applied to limit
data within a specified range, ensuring that these values do not excessively influence
model training.
 Removal: Outliers that were deemed errors or abnormal data points were completely
removed from the dataset to ensure data consistency and model accuracy.

Inconsistencies:

Inconsistent data, such as duplicate entries or contradictory information, was handled by

the following techniques:

 Duplicate Entries: We used pandas' duplicated() function to identify and remove

any duplicate rows, ensuring that data was unique and not redundant.

3|Page
IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

 Contradictory Information: For example, if there were conflicting values such as an

age that didn’t match the income level, those entries were flagged for further
investigation and corrected or removed from the dataset.

2.3 Feature Scaling and Normalization

Feature scaling ensures that all features are comparable in magnitude, which is essential for
deep learning models like autoencoders. Without scaling, features with larger magnitudes
could dominate the learning process, leading to inaccurate model performance. The two main
techniques used for scaling and normalization in this project are Standardization (Z-score
normalization) and Min-Max Scaling.

Steps for Scaling and Normalization:

 Standardization (Z-score normalization):

o This method scales the data such that the mean of the features is 0, and the
standard deviation is 1. It ensures that all features are centered around 0 with a
uniform variance, making them comparable.
 Formula:

Where X minx and Xmax are the minimum and maximum values of the feature, respectively.

 Min-Max Scaling:
o This method rescales the data to a fixed range, usually between [0, 1],
ensuring that all feature values lie within this range.
o Formula:

X−max⁡(X)
×′ = min(x)−max⁡(x)

Code Example for Scaling:

python
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler, MinMaxScaler

# Standardization

4|Page
IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

scaler = StandardScaler()
data_scaled = scaler.fit_transform(data)

# Min-Max Scaling
min_max_scaler = MinMaxScaler()
data_minmax_scaled = min_max_scaler.fit_transform(data)

Screenshots of Scaling Process:

2.4 Feature Transformation and Dimensionality Reduction

To prepare the dataset for deep learning, feature transformation and dimensionality reduction
were critical steps to optimize performance and reduce complexity.

1. Dimensionality Reduction:

Given the high number of features in the dataset, dimensionality reduction techniques were
applied to:

 Minimize computational cost.

 Avoid overfitting by reducing redundancy and noise.
 Highlight important patterns in the data.

Techniques Used:

 Principal Component Analysis (PCA):

o PCA was implemented to reduce dimensionality while retaining maximum
variance. This technique helped:
 Remove multicollinearity among highly correlated features.
 Provide a compact and meaningful representation of the dataset.
 Feature Selection:

5|Page
IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

o Features that contributed minimal value to the clustering process were

identified and removed. Methods applied included:
 Analyzing feature importance scores.
 Variance Thresholding to exclude low-variance features across
samples.

2. Importance of Dimensionality Reduction in the Project:

 Enhanced model training speed and efficiency.

 Improved the generalization ability of the model by reducing overfitting risks.
 Provided a cleaner and more interpretable dataset for subsequent analysis.

2.5 Autoencoder Model Design

The focus was on designing and implementing an autoencoder model to perform deep
clustering by compressing data into a latent feature space.

1. Model Architecture:

 Encoder Architecture:
o Input Layer: Accepts the transformed feature vector.
o Dense Layers: Progressively reduces the feature space size (e.g., 64 → 32 →
8 neurons).
o Final Latent Layer: Compresses the data into an 8-dimensional latent space.
 Decoder Architecture:
o Dense Layers: Mirrors the encoder by expanding the latent representation
back to the original feature space.
o Output Layer: Utilizes a sigmoid activation function to normalize
reconstructed values between 0 and 1.

2. Loss Function and Optimizer:

 Loss Function: Mean Squared Error (MSE) to minimize reconstruction errors.

 Optimizer: Adam optimizer for efficient gradient-based optimization.

2.6 Model Training and Validation

With the autoencoder designed, the training process involved the following steps:

1. Data Split:

 The dataset was split into training and validation sets to evaluate model performance
and prevent overfitting.

2. Training Configuration:

 Epochs: 50 epochs.
 Batch Size: 32.

3. Monitoring Performance:

6|Page
IBM AIML INTERNSHIP

 Reconstruction error was continuously monitored on both training and validation

datasets.
 Hyperparameters like learning rate and batch size were fine-tuned to optimize results.

4. Outcome:

 The encoder successfully extracted an 8-dimensional latent feature representation.

 These latent features encapsulate the essential patterns and structures in the original
data, ready for clustering in the next phase.

2.7 Conclusion of Phase 2

Phase 2 focused on transforming and preparing the dataset for deep learning. Key
achievements included:

 Application of PCA and feature selection to reduce dimensionality, thereby

optimizing efficiency and preventing overfitting.
 Development and training of an autoencoder model to extract compressed latent
features for clustering.

The groundwork established in this phase ensures a robust platform for segmentation and
clustering, which will drive actionable insights in subsequent phases of the project.

7|Page