Data Mining:

Concepts and Techniques

Chapter 2

Jiawei Han
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
www.cs.uiuc.edu/~hanj
2006 Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber, All rights reserved
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 1
 Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 2
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Descriptive data summarization
Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation

2/13/17
Summary Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 3
 Why Data Preprocessing?
Data in the real world is dirty
incomplete: lacking attribute values,

lacking certain attributes of interest, or

containing only aggregate data
e.g., occupation=
noisy: containing errors or outliers
e.g., Salary=-10
inconsistent: containing discrepancies in
codes or names
e.g., Age=42 Birthday=03/07/1997
e.g., Was rating 1,2,3, now rating A, B, C
e.g., discrepancy between duplicate records
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 4
 Why Is Data Dirty?
Incomplete data may come from
Not applicable data value when collected
Different considerations between the time when the data
was collected and when it is analyzed.
Human/hardware/software problems
Noisy data (incorrect values) may come from
Faulty data collection instruments
Human or computer error at data entry
Errors in data transmission
Inconsistent data may come from
Different data sources
Functional dependency violation (e.g., modify some linked
data)
Duplicate records also need data cleaning
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 5
 Why Is Data Preprocessing
Important?

No quality data, no quality mining results!

Quality decisions must be based on quality data
e.g., duplicate or missing data may cause incorrect or
even misleading statistics.
Data warehouse needs consistent integration of
quality data
Data extraction, cleaning, and transformation
comprises the majority of the work of building a
data warehouse

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 6
 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
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 7
 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
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 8
 Forms of Data Preprocessing

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 9
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Descriptive data summarization
Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation

2/13/17
Summary Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 10
 Mining Data Descriptive
Characteristics
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 cube
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 11
 Measuring the Central Tendency
1
x xi
Mean (algebraic measure) (sample vs. population):
n

x
n i 1 N
Weighted arithmetic mean: n

w x i i
Trimmed mean: chopping extreme values
x i 1
n

w i
Median: A holistic measure i 1

Middle value if odd number of values, or average of the

middle two values otherwise
Estimated by interpolation (for grouped data):
n / 2 ( f )l
Mode median L1 ( )c
f median
Value that occurs most frequently in the data
Unimodal, bimodal, trimodal
Empirical formula:
mean mode 3 (mean median)
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 12
 Symmetric vs. Skewed
Data

Median, mean and mode of

symmetric, positively and
negatively skewed data

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 13
 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, M, Q3, max
Boxplot: ends of the box are the quartiles, median is marked,
whiskers, and plot outlier individually
Outlier: usually, a value higher/lower than 1.5 x IQR
Variance and standard deviation (sample: s, population: )
Variance: (algebraic, scalable computation)
1 n 1 n 2 1 n 2 1 n
1 n
s
2

n 1 i 1
( xi x )
2
[ xi ( xi ) ]
n 1 i 1 n i 1

N
2

i 1
( xi
2
)
N
xi 2
i 1
2

Standard deviation s (or ) is the square root of variance s2 (or 2)

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 14
 Properties of Normal Distribution
Curve
The normal (distribution) curve
From to +: contains about 68% of the

measurements (: mean, : standard deviation)

From 2 to +2: contains about 95% of it
From 3 to +3: contains about 99.7% of it

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 15
 Boxplot Analysis

Five-number summary of a distribution:

Minimum, Q1, M, 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
IRQ
The median is marked by a line within the
box
Whiskers: two lines outside the box extend
to Minimum and Maximum
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 16
 Visualization of Data Dispersion: Boxplot
Analysis

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 17
 Histogram Analysis

Graph displays of basic statistical class

descriptions
Frequency histograms

A univariate graphical method

Consists of a set of rectangles that reflect the counts
or frequencies of the classes present in the given
data

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 18
 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 x data sorted in increasing order, f
i i
indicates that approximately 100 fi% of the data
are below or equal to the value xi

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 19
 Quantile-Quantile (Q-Q) Plot
Graphs the quantiles of one univariate distribution
against the corresponding quantiles of another
Allows the user to view whether there is a shift in
going from one distribution to another

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 20
 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

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 21
 Loess Curve
Adds a smooth curve to a scatter plot in order to
provide better perception of the pattern of
dependence
Loess curve is fitted by setting two parameters: a
smoothing parameter, and the degree of the
polynomials that are fitted by the regression

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 22
 Positively and Negatively Correlated
Data

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 23
 Not Correlated Data

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 24
 Graphic Displays of Basic Statistical
Descriptions

Histogram: (shown before)

Boxplot: (covered before)
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
Loess (local regression) curve: add a smooth curve
to a scatter plot to provide better perception of the
pattern
2/13/17
of dependence
Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 25
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Descriptive data summarization
Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation

2/13/17
Summary Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 26
 Data Cleaning

Importance
Data cleaning is one of the three biggest

problems in data warehousingRalph

Kimball
Data cleaning is the number one problem in

data warehousingDCI survey

Data cleaning tasks
Fill in missing values
Identify outliers and smooth out noisy data
Correct inconsistent data
Resolve redundancy caused by data
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 27
 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.

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 28
 How to Handle Missing Data?
Ignore the tuple: usually done when class label is missing
(assuming the tasks in classificationnot effective when the
percentage of missing values per attribute varies
considerably.
Fill in the missing value manually: tedious + infeasible?
Fill in it automatically with
a global constant : e.g., unknown, a new class?!
the attribute mean
the attribute mean for all samples belonging to the same
class: smarter
the most probable value: inference-based such as
Bayesian formula orMining:
Data decision
Conceptstree
and
2/13/17 Techniques 29
 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
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 30
 How to Handle Noisy Data?
Binning
first sort data and partition into (equal-

frequency) bins
then one can smooth by bin means, smooth by

bin median, smooth by bin boundaries, etc.

Regression
smooth by fitting the data into regression

functions
Clustering
detect and remove outliers

Combined computer and human inspection

detect suspicious values and check by human

(e.g., deal with

Datapossible
Mining: Conceptsoutliers)
and
2/13/17 Techniques 31
 Simple Discretization Methods:
Binning
Equal-width (distance) partitioning
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
Divides the range into N intervals, each containing
approximately same number of samples

2/13/17
Good data scaling
Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 32
 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 equal-frequency (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
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 33
 Regression

Y1

Y1 y=x+1

X1 x

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 34
 Cluster Analysis

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 35
 Data Cleaning as a Process
Data discrepancy detection
Use metadata (e.g., domain, range, dependency,

distribution)
Check field overloading

Check uniqueness rule, consecutive rule and null rule

Use commercial tools

Data scrubbing: use simple domain knowledge (e.g.,

postal code, spell-check) to detect errors and make

corrections
Data auditing: by analyzing data to discover rules and

relationship to detect violators (e.g., correlation and

clustering to find outliers)
Data migration and integration

Data migration tools: allow transformations to be

specified
ETL (Extraction/Transformation/Loading) tools: allow users

to specify transformations through a graphical user

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 interface Techniques 36
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

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

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 37
 Data Integration
Data integration:
Combines data from multiple sources into a

coherent store
Schema integration: e.g., A.cust-id B.cust-#
Integrate metadata from different sources

Entity identification problem:

Identify real world entities from multiple data

sources, e.g., Bill Clinton = William Clinton

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

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 38
 Handling Redundancy in Data
Integration
Redundant data occur often when integration of
multiple databases
Object identification: The same attribute or
object may have different names in different
databases
Derivable data: One attribute may be a
derived attribute in another table, e.g.,
annual revenue
Redundant attributes may be able to be detected
by correlation analysis
Careful integration of the data from multiple
sources may help reduce/avoid redundancies and
2/13/17inconsistencies and improve mining speed 39and
Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques
 Correlation Analysis (Numerical
Data)

Correlation coefficient (also called Pearsons

product moment coefficient)

rA, B
( A A)( B B ) ( AB ) n A B

(n 1)AB ( n 1)AB

where n is the number of tuples,

A and
B are the
respective means of A and B, A and B are the respective
standard deviation of A and B, and (AB) is the sum of the
AB cross-product.
If rA,B > 0, A and B are positively correlated (As
values increase as Bs). The higher, the stronger
correlation.
r
2/13/17 A,B
= 0: independent; rA,B < 0: negatively correlated
Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 40
 Correlation Analysis (Categorical
Data)

2 (chi-square) test
(Observed Expected ) 2
2
Expected
The larger the 2 value, the more likely the
variables are related
The cells that contribute the most to the 2 value
are those whose actual count is very different from
the expected count
Correlation does not imply causality
# of hospitals and # of car-theft in a city are correlated
Both are causally linked to the third variable: population
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 41
 Chi-Square Calculation: An Example

Play Not play Sum

chess chess (row)
Like science fiction 250(90) 200(360) 450
Not like science 50(210) 1000(840) 1050
fiction
Sum(col.) 300 1200 1500

2 (chi-square) calculation (numbers in parenthesis

are expected counts calculated based on the data
distribution in the two categories)

( 250 90 ) 2
(50 210) 2
( 200 360) 2
(1000 840 ) 2
2 507.93
90 210 360 840
It shows that like_science_fiction and play_chess
are correlated in the group
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 42
 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
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 ones Techniques 43
 Data Transformation:
Normalization
Min-max normalization: to [new_minA, new_maxA]
v minA
v' (new _ maxA new _ minA) new _ minA
maxA minA
Ex. Let income range $12,000 to $98,000 normalized to
73,600 12,000
(1.0 0) 0 0.716
[0.0, 1.0]. Then $73,000 is mapped to
98,000 12,000
Z-score normalization (: mean, : standard deviation):
v A
v'
A

73,600 54,000
Ex. Let = 54,000, = 16,000. Then16,000 1.225

Normalization by decimal scaling

v
v' j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(||) < 1
10
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 44
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 45
 Data Reduction Strategies

Why data reduction?

A database/data 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
Obtain a reduced representation of the data set that is

much smaller in volume but yet produce the same (or

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

Dimensionality reduction e.g., remove unimportant

attributes
Data Compression

Numerosity reduction e.g., fit data into models

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 46
 Data Cube Aggregation
The lowest level of a data cube (base cuboid)
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
Dataaggregated
Mining: Concepts and information should
2/13/17 Techniques 47
 Attribute Subset Selection
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 Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 48
 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}

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 49
 Heuristic Feature Selection
Methods
There are 2d possible sub-features of d features
Several heuristic feature selection methods:

Best single features under the feature

independence assumption: choose by

significance tests
Best step-wise feature selection:

The best single-feature is picked first

Then next best feature condition to the

first, ...
Step-wise feature elimination:

Repeatedly eliminate the worst feature

Best combined feature selection and elimination

Optimal branch and bound:

Use feature elimination and backtracking

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 50
 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
Data vary
Mining: slowly
Concepts and with time
2/13/17 Techniques 51
 Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

s s y
lo
Original Data
Approximated

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 52
 Dimensionality Reduction:
Wavelet Transformation
Haar2 Daubechie4
Discrete wavelet transform (DWT): linear signal
processing, multi-resolutional analysis
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,
Data Mining: Concepts and until reaches the desired
2/13/17 Techniques 53
 DWT for Image Compression
Image

Low Pass High Pass

Low Pass High Pass

Low Pass High Pass

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 54
 Dimensionality Reduction:
Principal Component Analysis
(PCA)
Given N data vectors from n-dimensions, find k n
orthogonal vectors (principal components) that can be best
used to represent data
Steps

Normalize input data: Each attribute falls within the same

range
Compute k orthonormal (unit) vectors, i.e., principal

components
Each input data (vector) is a linear combination of the k

principal component vectors

The principal components are sorted in order of decreasing

significance or strength
Since the components are sorted, the size of the data can

be reduced by eliminating the weak components, i.e.,

those with low variance. (i.e., using the strongest principal
components, it isData
possible to reconstruct
Mining: Concepts and a good
2/13/17 approximation ofTechniques
the original data 55
 Principal Component
Analysis
X2

Y1
Y2

X1

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 56
 Numerosity Reduction
Reduce data volume by choosing alternative,
smaller forms of data representation
Parametric methods
Assume the data fits some model, estimate

model parameters, store only the parameters,

and discard the data (except possible outliers)
Example: Log-linear modelsobtain 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 Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 57
 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

2/13/17 multidimensional probability distributions

Data Mining: Concepts and
Techniques 58
 Regress Analysis and Log-Linear
Models
Linear regression: Y = w X + b
Two regression coefficients, w and b, 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 acad bcd
 Data Reduction Method (2):
Histograms
Divide data into buckets and 40
store average (sum) for each
35
bucket
Partitioning rules: 30
Equal-width: equal bucket 25
range 20
Equal-frequency (or equal-
15
depth)
V-optimal: with the least 10
histogram variance 5
(weighted sum of the 0
original values that each

50000
10000

20000

30000

40000

60000

70000

80000

90000

100000
bucket represents)
Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 MaxDiff: set bucket
Techniques 60
 Data Reduction Method (3):
Clustering

Partition data set into clusters based on similarity, and store

cluster representation (e.g., centroid and diameter) 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
Cluster analysis will be studied in depth in Chapter 7

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 61
 Data Reduction Method (4):
Sampling
Sampling: obtaining a small sample s to represent
the whole data set N
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

Note: Sampling may not reduce database I/Os

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 (page at a time) Techniques 62
 Sampling: with or without
Replacement

W O R
SRS le random
i m p h o ut
( s e wi t
l
samp ment)
e pl a ce
r

SRSW
R

Raw Data
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 63
 Sampling: Cluster or Stratified Sampling

Raw Data Cluster/Stratified Sample

Data Mining: Concepts and

2/13/17 Techniques 64
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 65
 Discretization
Three types of attributes:
Nominal values from an unordered set, e.g., color,
profession
Ordinal values from an ordered set, e.g., military or
academic rank
Continuous real numbers, e.g., integer or real numbers
Discretization:
Divide the range of a continuous attribute into intervals
Some classification algorithms only accept categorical
attributes.
Reduce data size by discretization
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Prepare for further analysis
Techniques 66
 Discretization and Concept
Hierarchy
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
Supervised vs. unsupervised
Split (top-down) vs. merge (bottom-up)
Discretization can be performed recursively on an attribute
Concept hierarchy formation
Recursively reduce the data by collecting and replacing low
level concepts (such as numeric values for age) by higher
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 level concepts (such as young, middle-aged, or senior)
Techniques 67
 Discretization and Concept Hierarchy
Generation for Numeric Data
Typical methods: All the methods can be applied recursively
Binning (covered above)
Top-down split, unsupervised,
Histogram analysis (covered above)

Top-down split, unsupervised
Clustering analysis (covered above)
Either top-down split or bottom-up merge, unsupervised
Entropy-based discretization: supervised, top-down split
Interval merging by 2 Analysis: unsupervised, bottom-up
merge
Segmentation by natural partitioning: top-down split,
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 unsupervised Techniques 68
 Entropy-Based Discretization
Given a set of samples S, if S is partitioned into two intervals
S1 and S2 using boundary T, the information gain after
partitioning is I ( S , T ) | S 1 | Entropy ( S 1) | S 2 | Entropy ( S 2)
|S| |S|

Entropy is calculated based on class distribution of the

m
samples in the set. Given m classes, the
Entropy ( S1 ) pi log entropy of S1 is
2 ( pi )
i 1

where pi is the probability of class i in S1

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
Such a boundary may reduce data size and improve
Data Mining: Concepts and
classification accuracy
2/13/17 Techniques 69
 Interval Merge by 2 Analysis
Merging-based (bottom-up) vs. splitting-based methods
Merge: Find the best neighboring intervals and merge them to
form larger intervals recursively
ChiMerge [Kerber AAAI 1992, See also Liu et al. DMKD 2002]
Initially, each distinct value of a numerical attr. A is
considered to be one interval
2 tests are performed for every pair of adjacent intervals
Adjacent intervals with the least 2 values are merged
together, since low 2 values for a pair indicate similar class
distributions
This merge process proceeds recursively until a predefined
stopping criterion is met (such as significance level, max-

2/13/17
interval, max inconsistency,
Techniques
etc.)
Data Mining: Concepts and
70
 Segmentation by Natural
Partitioning

A simply 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
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 most significant digit, partition the range
Techniques 71 into 5
 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)

(-$400 -$5,000)
Step 4:

(-$400 - 0) ($2,000 - $5, 000)

(0 - $1,000) ($1,000 - $2, 000)
(0 -
(-$400 - ($1,000 -
$200)
$1,200) ($2,000 -
-$300)
($200 - $3,000)
($1,200 -
(-$300 - $400)
$1,400)
-$200) ($3,000 -
($400 - ($1,400 - $4,000)
(-$200 - $600) $1,600) ($4,000 -
-$100) $5,000)
($600 - ($1,600 -
$800) ($800 - ($1,800 -
$1,800)
(-$100 - $1,000) $2,000)
0) Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 72
 Concept Hierarchy Generation for
Categorical Data

Specification of a partial/total ordering of attributes

explicitly at the schema level by users or experts
street < city < state < country
Specification of a hierarchy for a set of values by
explicit data grouping
{Urbana, Champaign, Chicago} < Illinois
Specification of only a partial set of attributes
E.g., only street < city, not others
Automatic generation of hierarchies (or attribute
levels) by the analysis of the number of distinct
values
E.g., for a set Data
of Mining:
attributes:
Concepts and {street, city, state,
2/13/17 Techniques 73
 Automatic Concept Hierarchy
Generation
Some hierarchies can be automatically
generated based on the analysis of the number
of distinct values per attribute in the data set
The attribute with the most distinct values is

placed at the lowest level of the hierarchy

Exceptions, e.g., weekday, month, quarter,

year
country 15 distinct values

province_or_ state 365 distinct values

city 3567 distinct values

street 674,339 distinct values

Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 74
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 75
 Summary
Data preparation or preprocessing is a big issue
for both data warehousing and data mining
Discriptive data summarization is need for quality
data preprocessing
Data preparation includes
Data cleaning and data integration
Data reduction and feature selection
Discretization
A lot a methods have been developed but data
preprocessing still an active area of research
Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 76
 References
D. P. Ballou and G. K. Tayi. Enhancing data quality in data warehouse environments.
Communications of ACM, 42:73-78, 1999
T. Dasu and T. Johnson. Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning. John Wiley & Sons,
2003
T. Dasu, T. Johnson, S. Muthukrishnan, V. Shkapenyuk.
Mining Database Structure; Or, How to Build a Data Quality Browser. SIGMOD02.
H.V. 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
E. Rahm and H. H. Do. Data Cleaning: Problems and Current Approaches. IEEE Bulletin of
the Technical Committee on Data Engineering. Vol.23, No.4
V. Raman and J. Hellerstein. Potters Wheel: An Interactive Framework for Data Cleaning
and Transformation, VLDB2001
T. Redman. Data Quality: Management and Technology. Bantam Books, 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 DataData
Engineering, 7:623-640,
Mining: Concepts and 1995
2/13/17 Techniques 77
 Data Mining: Concepts and
2/13/17 Techniques 78