Data Mining:

Concepts and Techniques

— Chapter 3 —

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Summary

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 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
 No quality data, no quality mining results!
 Quality decisions must be based on quality data

 Data warehouse needs consistent integration of

quality data
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 Multi-Dimensional Measure of Data Quality

 A well-accepted multidimensional view:

 Accuracy

 Completeness

 Consistency

 Timeliness

 Believability

 Value added

 Interpretability

 Accessibility

 Broad categories:
 intrinsic, contextual, representational, and

accessibility.
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 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing

 Data cleaning
 Fill in missing values, smooth noisy data, identify or remove
outliers, and resolve inconsistencies
 Data integration
 Integration of multiple databases, data cubes, or files
 Data transformation
 Normalization and aggregation
 Data reduction
 Obtains reduced representation in volume but produces the same
or similar analytical results
 Data discretization
 Part of data reduction but with particular importance, especially for
numerical data

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Forms of data preprocessing

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Summary

7
 Data Cleaning

 Data cleaning tasks

 Fill in missing values
 Identify outliers and smooth out noisy data
 Correct inconsistent data

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 Missing Data
 Data is not always available
 E.g., many tuples have no recorded value for several
attributes, such as customer income in sales data
 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.

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 How to Handle Missing Data?
 Ignore the tuple: usually done when class label is missing (assuming
the tasks in classification—not effective when the percentage of
missing values per attribute varies considerably.
 Fill in the missing value manually: tedious + infeasible?
 Use a global constant to fill in the missing value: e.g., “unknown”, a
new class?!
 Use the attribute mean to fill in the missing value
 Use the attribute mean for all samples belonging to the same class to
fill in the missing value: smarter
 Use the most probable value to fill in the missing value: inference-
based such as Bayesian formula or decision tree
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 Noisy Data

 Noise: random error or variance in a measured variable

 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 which requires data cleaning

 duplicate records

 incomplete data

 inconsistent data

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 How to Handle Noisy Data?
 Binning method:
 first sort data and partition into (equi-depth) bins

 then one can smooth by bin means, smooth by bin

median, smooth by bin boundaries, etc.

 Clustering
 detect and remove outliers

 Combined computer and human inspection

 detect suspicious values and check by human

 Regression
 smooth by fitting the data into regression functions

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 Simple Discretization Methods: Binning
 Equal-width (distance) partitioning:
 It divides the range 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.

 Equal-depth (frequency) partitioning:

 It divides the range into N intervals, each containing

approximately same number of samples

 Good data scaling

 Managing categorical attributes can be tricky.

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 Binning Methods for Data Smoothing
* Sorted data for price (in dollars): 4, 8, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28,
29, 34
* Partition into (equi-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

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Cluster Analysis

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Regression
y

Y1

Y1’ y=x+1

X1 x

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Summary

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 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

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 Handling Redundant Data
in Data Integration
 Redundant data occur often when integration of multiple
databases
 The same attribute may have different names in
different databases
 One attribute may be a “derived” attribute in another
table, e.g., annual revenue
 Redundant data may be able to be detected by
correlational analysis
 Careful integration of the data from multiple sources may
help reduce/avoid redundancies and inconsistencies and
improve mining speed and quality
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 Data Transformation

 Smoothing: remove noise from data

 Aggregation: summarization, data cube construction
 Generalization: concept hierarchy climbing
 Normalization: scaled to fall within a small, specified range
 min-max normalization
 z-score normalization
 normalization by decimal scaling
 Attribute/feature construction
 New attributes constructed from the given ones

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 Data Transformation:
Normalization
 min-max normalization
v  minA
v'  (new _ maxA  new _ minA)  new _ minA
maxA  minA
 z-score normalization
v  meanA
v' 
stand _ devA
 normalization by decimal scaling
v
v'  j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(| v ' |)<1
10

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Summary

22
 Data Reduction Strategies
 Warehouse may store terabytes of data: Complex data
analysis/mining may take a very long time to run on the
complete data set
 Data reduction
 Obtains a reduced representation of the data set that is

much smaller in volume but yet produces the same (or

almost the same) analytical results
 Data reduction strategies
 Data cube aggregation

 Dimensionality reduction

 Numerosity reduction

 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

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 Data Cube Aggregation
 The lowest level of a data cube
 the aggregated data for an individual entity of interest
 e.g., a customer in a phone calling data warehouse.
 Multiple levels of aggregation in data cubes
 Further reduce the size of data to deal with
 Reference appropriate levels
 Use the smallest representation which is enough to solve
the task
 Queries regarding aggregated information should be
answered using data cube, when possible
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 Dimensionality Reduction
 Feature selection (i.e., attribute subset selection):
 Select a minimum set of features such that the

probability distribution of different classes given the

values for those features is as close as possible to the
original distribution given the values of all features
 reduce # of patterns in the patterns, easier to

understand
 Heuristic methods (due to exponential # of choices):
 step-wise forward selection

 step-wise backward elimination

 combining forward selection and backward elimination

 decision-tree induction
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Example of Decision Tree Induction

Initial attribute set:

{A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6}
A4 ?

A1? A6?

Class 1 Class 2 Class 1 Class 2

> Reduced attribute set: {A1, A4, A6}

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 Data Compression
 String compression
 There are extensive theories and well-tuned algorithms

 Typically lossless

 But only limited manipulation is possible without

expansion
 Audio/video compression
 Typically lossy compression, with progressive

refinement
 Sometimes small fragments of signal can be

reconstructed without reconstructing the whole

 Time sequence is not audio
 Typically short and vary slowly with time

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Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

ss y
lo
Original Data
Approximated

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 Wavelet Transforms
Haar2 Daubechie4
 Discrete wavelet transform (DWT): linear signal processing
 Compressed approximation: store only a small fraction of
the strongest of the wavelet coefficients
 Similar to discrete Fourier transform (DFT), but better lossy
compression, localized in space
 Method:
 Length, L, must be an integer power of 2 (padding with 0s, when
necessary)
 Each transform has 2 functions: smoothing, difference
 Applies to pairs of data, resulting in two set of data of length L/2
 Applies two functions recursively, until reaches the desired length

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 Principal Component Analysis

 Given N data vectors from k-dimensions, find c <= k

orthogonal vectors that can be best used to represent
data
 The original data set is reduced to one consisting of
N data vectors on c principal components (reduced
dimensions)
 Each data vector is a linear combination of the c
principal component vectors
 Works for numeric data only
 Used when the number of dimensions is large
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Principal Component Analysis

X2

Y1
Y2

X1

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 Numerosity Reduction

 Parametric methods
 Assume the data fits some model, estimate model
parameters, store only the parameters, and discard
the data (except possible outliers)
 Log-linear models: obtain value at a point in m-D
space as the product on appropriate marginal
subspaces
 Non-parametric methods
 Do not assume models
 Major families: histograms, clustering, sampling

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 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

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 Regress Analysis and Log-
Linear Models
 Linear regression: Y =  +  X
 Two parameters ,  and  specify the line and are to

be estimated by using the data at hand.

 using the least squares criterion to the known values

of Y1, Y2, …, X1, X2, ….

 Multiple regression: Y = b0 + b1 X1 + b2 X2.
 Many nonlinear functions can be transformed into the

above.
 Log-linear models:
 The multi-way table of joint probabilities is

approximated by a product of lower-order tables.

 Probability: p(a, b, c, d) = ab acad bcd

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 Histograms

 A popular data reduction 40

technique 35
 Divide data into buckets 30
and store average (sum)
25
for each bucket
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 Can be constructed
optimally in one 15
dimension using dynamic 10
programming
5
 Related to quantization
problems. 0

60000

80000
10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

70000

90000

100000
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 Clustering

 Partition data set into clusters, and one can store cluster
representation only
 Can be very effective if data is clustered but not if data
is “smeared”
 Can have hierarchical clustering and be stored in multi-
dimensional index tree structures
 There are many choices of clustering definitions and
clustering algorithms, further detailed in Chapter 8

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 Sampling

 Allow a mining algorithm to run in complexity that is

potentially sub-linear to the size of the data
 Choose a representative subset of the data
 Simple random sampling may have very poor

performance in the presence of skew

 Develop 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

 Sampling may not reduce database I/Os (page at a time).

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 Sampling

W O R
SRS le random
i m p h ou t
( s e wi t
l
samp ment)
pl a c e
re

SRSW
R

Raw Data
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Sampling

Raw Data Cluster/Stratified Sample

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 Hierarchical Reduction
 Use multi-resolution structure with different degrees of
reduction
 Hierarchical clustering is often performed but tends to
define partitions of data sets rather than “clusters”
 Parametric methods are usually not amenable to
hierarchical representation
 Hierarchical aggregation
 An index tree hierarchically divides a data set into

partitions by value range of some attributes

 Each partition can be considered as a bucket

 Thus an index tree with aggregates stored at each

node is a hierarchical histogram

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Summary

42
 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

attributes.
 Reduce data size by discretization

 Prepare for further analysis

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 Discretization and Concept hierachy

 Discretization
 reduce the number of values for a given continuous
attribute by dividing the range of the attribute into
intervals. Interval labels can then be 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).

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 Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation for numeric data

 Binning

 Histogram analysis

 Clustering analysis

 Entropy-based discretization

 Segmentation by natural partitioning

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 Entropy-Based Discretization
 Given a set of samples S, if S is partitioned into two
intervals S1 and S2 using boundary T, the entropy after
partitioning is |S | |S |
E (S , T )  1 Ent ( )  2 Ent ( )
|S| S1 | S | S2
 The boundary that minimizes the entropy function over all
possible boundaries is selected as a binary discretization.
 The process is recursively applied to partitions obtained
until some stopping criterion is met, e.g.,
Ent ( S )  E (T , S )  
 Experiments show that it may reduce data size and
improve classification accuracy

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 Segmentation by natural partitioning

3-4-5 rule can be used to segment numeric data 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
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 Example of 3-4-5 rule
count

Step 1: -$351 -$159 profit $1,838 $4,700

Min Low (i.e, 5%-tile) High(i.e, 95%-0 tile) Max
Step 2: msd=1,000 Low=-$1,000 High=$2,000

(-$1,000 - $2,000)
Step 3:

(-$1,000 - 0) (0 -$ 1,000) ($1,000 - $2,000)

(-$4000 -$5,000)
Step 4:

($2,000 - $5, 000)

(-$400 - 0) (0 - $1,000) ($1,000 - $2, 000)
(0 -
($1,000 -
(-$400 - $200)
$1,200) ($2,000 -
-$300) $3,000)
($200 -
($1,200 -
$400)
(-$300 - $1,400)
($3,000 -
-$200)
($400 - ($1,400 - $4,000)
(-$200 - $600) $1,600) ($4,000 -
-$100) ($600 - ($1,600 - $5,000)
$800) ($800 - ($1,800 -
$1,800)
(-$100 - $1,000) $2,000)
0)
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 Concept hierarchy generation for
categorical data

 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

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 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

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Summary

51
 Summary

 Data preparation is a big issue for both warehousing

and mining
 Data preparation includes
 Data cleaning and data integration
 Data reduction and feature selection
 Discretization
 A lot a methods have been developed but still an active
area of research

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 References
 D. P. Ballou and G. K. Tayi. Enhancing data quality in data warehouse
environments. Communications of ACM, 42:73-78, 1999.
 Jagadish et al., Special Issue on Data Reduction Techniques. Bulletin of the
Technical Committee on Data Engineering, 20(4), December 1997.
 D. Pyle. Data Preparation for Data Mining. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
 T. Redman. Data Quality: Management and Technology. Bantam Books, New
York, 1992.
 Y. Wand and R. Wang. Anchoring data quality dimensions ontological
foundations. Communications of ACM, 39:86-95, 1996.
 R. Wang, V. Storey, and C. Firth. A framework for analysis of data quality
research. IEEE Trans. Knowledge and Data Engineering, 7:623-640, 1995.

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