Concepts and

Techniques

— Chapter 2 —

Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber, and Jian Pei

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Simon Fraser University
©2011 Han, Kamber, and Pei. All rights
reserved.
1
Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your
Data

 Data Objects and Attribute Types

 Data Visualization

2
 Types of Data Sets
 Record

Relational records

Data matrix, e.g., numerical matrix,

timeout

season
coach

game
score
team

ball

lost
pla

wi
crosstabs

n
y

Document data: text documents: term-
frequency vector
Document 1 3 0 5 0 2 6 0 2 0 2

Transaction data
 Graph and network Document 2 0 7 0 2 1 0 0 3 0 0

World Wide Web
Document 3 0 1 0 0 1 2 2 0 3 0

Social or information networks

Molecular Structures
 Ordered TID Items

Video data: sequence of images
1 Bread, Coke, Milk

Temporal data: time-series

Sequential Data: transaction 2 Beer, Bread
sequences 3 Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk

Genetic sequence data 4 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk
 Spatial, image and multimedia:
5 Coke, Diaper, Milk

Spatial data: maps

Image data:

Video data:
3
 Important Characteristics of
Structured Data

 Dimensionality
 Curse of dimensionality
 Sparsity
 Only presence counts
 Resolution

Patterns depend on the scale
 Distribution
 Centrality and dispersion

4
 Data Objects

 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.
5
 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

 Numeric: quantitative


Interval-scaled

Ratio-scaled
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 Attribute Types
 Nominal: categories, states, or “names of things”
 Hair_color = {auburn, black, blond, brown, grey, red,
white}
 marital status, occupation, ID numbers, zip codes
 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., HIV positive)
 Ordinal
 Values have a meaningful order (ranking) but magnitude
between successive values is not known.
 Size = {small, medium, large}, grades, army rankings
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 Numeric Attribute Types
 Quantity (integer or real-valued)
 Interval

Measured on a scale of equal-sized units

Values have order
 E.g., temperature in C˚or F˚, calendar dates

No true zero-point
 Ratio

Inherent zero-point

We can speak of values as being an order of
magnitude larger than the unit of
measurement (10 K˚ is twice as high as 5 K˚).
 e.g., temperature in Kelvin, length, counts,
monetary quantities

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 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
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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
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 Histogram Analysis
 Histogram: Graph display of
tabulated frequencies, shown as 40
bars 35
 It shows what proportion of cases
30
fall into each of several categories
25
 Differs from a bar chart in that it
is the area of the bar that denotes 20
the value, not the height as in bar 15
charts, a crucial distinction when
the categories are not of uniform 10
width 5
 The categories are usually 0
specified as non-overlapping 10000 30000 50000 70000 90000

intervals of some variable. The

categories (bars) must be
adjacent
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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

12
Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your
Data

 Data Objects and Attribute Types

 Data Visualization

13
 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
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 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 (c) transaction (d) age

Limit volume 15
 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

(b) Laying out pixels in circle
record in circle segment
segment
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 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
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Ribbons with Twists Based on Vorticity
Direct Data Visualization

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 18

 Scatterplot Matrices

Used by ermission of M. Ward, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Matrix of scatterplots (x-y-diagrams) of the k-dim. data [total of (k2/2-k) scatterplots]

19
 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
representation which preserves the characteristics of the data

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 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

• • •

Attr. 1 Attr. 2 Attr. 3 Attr. k

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Parallel Coordinates of a Data Set

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 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
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 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.htm
l
24
 Stick Figure
A census data
figure showing
age, income,
used by permission of G. Grinstein, University of Massachusettes at Lowell

gender,
education, etc.

A 5-piece
stick figure (1
body and 4
limbs w.
different
Two attributes mapped to axes, remaining attributes mapped to angle or length of limbs”. Look at texture pattern
angle/length)
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 Hierarchical Visualization
Techniques

 Visualization of the data using a

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

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 Dimensional Stacking

attribute 4
attribute 2

attribute 3

attribute 1

 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

27
 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 the inner x-, y-
axes
28
 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
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 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

Ack.: 30
Tree-Map of a File System
(Schneiderman)

31
 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

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 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
Ack.: http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/visualization
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 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