Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Data Preprocessing: An Overview

 Data Quality
 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing
 Data Cleaning
 Data Integration
 Data Reduction
 Data Transformation and Data Discretization
 Summary
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2
 Data Quality: Why Preprocess the Data?

 Measures for data quality:

 Accuracy: correct or wrong, accurate or not
 Completeness: not recorded, unavailable, …
 Consistency: some modified but some not,
dangling, …
 Timeliness: timely update?
 Believability: how trustable the data are correct?
 Interpretability: how easily the data can be
understood? 3
 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 reduction
 Dimensionality reduction

 Numerosity reduction

 Data compression

 Data transformation and data discretization

 Normalization

 Concept hierarchy generation

4
 Data Cleaning
 Data in the Real World Is Dirty: Lots of potentially incorrect
data, e.g., instrument faulty, human or computer error,
transmission error
 incomplete: lacking attribute values, lacking certain

attributes of interest, or containing only aggregate data

 e.g., Occupation = “ ” (missing data)

 noisy: containing noise, errors, or outliers

 e.g., Salary = “−10” (an error)

 inconsistent: containing discrepancies in codes or names,

e.g.,
 Age = “42”, Birthday = “03/07/2010”

 Was rating “1, 2, 3”, now rating “A, B, C”

 discrepancy between duplicate records

 Intentional (e.g., disguised missing data)

 5
 Incomplete (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 6
 How to Handle Missing Data?
 Ignore the tuple: usually done when class label is missing
(when doing classification)—not effective when the % 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 or decision tree
7
 Noisy Data
 Noise: random error or variance in a measured variable
 Incorrect attribute values may be due to
 faulty data collection instruments

 data entry problems

 data transmission problems

 technology limitation

 inconsistency in naming convention

 Other data problems which require data cleaning

 duplicate records

 incomplete data

 inconsistent data

8
 How to Handle Noisy Data? - Data smoothing methods
 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. (Example: next slide)

 Regression
 smooth by fitting the data into regression functions. Find the

best line to fit 2 attributes so that one attribute can be used

to predict other
 Clustering
 detect and remove outliers. So values that fall outside

clusters are outliers

 Combined computer and human inspection
 detect suspicious values and check by human (e.g., deal

with possible outliers) 9

Example data: 4,8,15,21,21,24,24,28,34

We take the mean

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Data Preprocessing: An Overview

 Data Quality
 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing
 Data Cleaning
 Data Integration
 Data Reduction
 Data Transformation and Data Discretization
 Summary
11
 Data Integration
 Data integration:
 Combines data from multiple sources into a coherent store
 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 Redundancy in Data Integration

 Redundancy is a problem here. 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
 Careful integration of the data from multiple sources may
help reduce/avoid redundancies and inconsistencies and
improve mining speed and quality
 Redundant attributes can be detected by correlation
analysis and covariance analysis
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 Correlation Analysis (Nominal Data)
 Χ2 (chi-square) test
(Observed  Expected ) 2
2  
Expected
 The larger the Χ2 value, the more likely the variables are related
 The cells that contribute the most to the Χ2 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.

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 Chi-Square Calculation: An Example

Play chess Not play chess Sum (row)

Like science fiction 250(90) 200(360) 450

Not like science fiction 50(210) 1000(840) 1050

Sum(col.) 300 1200 1500

 Χ2 (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
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 Correlation Analysis (Numeric Data)
 Correlation coefficient (also called Pearson’s product moment
coefficient)

 
n n
(ai  A)(bi  B ) (ai bi )  n AB
rA, B  i 1
 i 1

(n  1) A B (n  1) A B
where n is the number of tuples, and are the respective
means of A and B, σA and σB are theA respective
B standard
deviation of A and B, and Σ(aibi) is the sum of the AB cross-
product.
 If rA,B > 0, A and B are positively correlated (A’s values increase as
B’s). The higher, the stronger correlation.
 rA,B = 0: independent; rAB < 0: negatively correlated
 Therefore, either A or B can be removed as a redundant attribute
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Visually Evaluating Correlation

Scatter plots
showing the
similarity from
–1 to 1.

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 Covariance (Numeric Data)
 Covariance is similar to correlation

Correlation coefficient:

where n is the number of tuples, A and B are the respective mean or

expected values of A and B, σA and σB are the respective standard deviation
of A and B
 Positive covariance: If CovA,B > 0, then A and B both tend to be larger than their
expected values
 Negative covariance: If CovA,B < 0 then if A is larger than its expected value, B is
likely to be smaller than its expected value
 Independence: CovA,B = 0 but the converse is not true:
 Some pairs of random variables may have a covariance of 0 but are not independent.
Only under some additional assumptions (e.g., the data follow multivariate normal
distributions) does a covariance of 0 imply independence 18
 Co-Variance: An Example

 It can be simplified in computation as

 Suppose two stocks A and B have the following values in one week: (2, 5), (3,
8), (5, 10), (4, 11), (6, 14).
 Question: If the stocks are affected by the same industry trends, will their
prices rise or fall together?
 E(A) = (2 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 6)/ 5 = 20/5 = 4
 E(B) = (5 + 8 + 10 + 11 + 14) /5 = 48/5 = 9.6
 Cov(A,B) = (2×5+3×8+5×10+4×11+6×14)/5 − 4 × 9.6 = 4
 Thus, A and B rise together since Cov(A, B) > 0.
 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Data Preprocessing: An Overview

 Data Quality
 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing
 Data Cleaning
 Data Integration
 Data Reduction
 Data Transformation and Data Discretization
 Summary
20
 Data Reduction Strategies
 Data reduction: Obtain a reduced representation of the data set that
is much smaller in volume but yet produces the same (or almost the
same) analytical results. So mining on the reduced dataset is more
efficient
 Why data reduction? — A database/data warehouse may store
terabytes of data. Complex data analysis may take a very long time to
run on the complete data set.
 Data reduction strategies
 Dimensionality reduction, e.g., remove unimportant attributes

 Wavelet transforms

 Principal Components Analysis (PCA)

 Feature subset selection, feature creation

 Numerosity reduction (some simply call it: Data Reduction)

 Regression and Log-Linear Models

 Histograms, clustering, sampling

 Data cube aggregation

 Data compression

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 Attribute Subset Selection
 Another way to reduce dimensionality of data
 Redundant attributes
 Duplicate much or all of the information contained in one
or more other attributes
 E.g., purchase price of a product and the amount of sales
tax paid
 Irrelevant attributes
 Contain no information that is useful for the data mining
task at hand
 E.g., students' ID is often irrelevant to the task of
predicting students' GPA
Using methods such as Information Gain and Decision Trees
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 Data Reduction: Numerosity Reduction
 Reduce data volume by choosing alternative, smaller
forms of data representation
 Parametric methods (e.g., regression)
 Assume the data fits some model, estimate model

parameters, store only the parameters, and discard

the data (except possible outliers)
 Ex.: 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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 Histogram Analysis
 Divide data into buckets and 40
store average (sum) for each
35
bucket
30
 Instead of storing entire data, it
25
is enough to store the value and
20
its frequency, that achieves data
reduction 15
 Partitioning rules: 10
 Equal-width: equal bucket 5
range 0
10000

20000

00

40000

0000

0000

70000

80000

90000
Equal-frequency (or equal-

100000

300

6
24
 Clustering
 Partition data set into clusters based on similarity, and
store cluster representation (e.g., centroid and diameter)
only
 Can have hierarchical clustering and be stored in multi-
dimensional index tree structures

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 Sampling

 Sampling: obtaining a small sample s to represent the

whole data set N
 Key principle: Choose a representative subset of the data
(Example next slide)
 Simple random sampling may have very poor
performance in the presence of skew
 Develop adaptive sampling methods, e.g., stratified
sampling:

26
 Types of Sampling

 Simple random sampling

 There is an equal probability of selecting any particular

item
 Sampling without replacement
 Once an object is selected, it is removed from the

population
 Sampling with replacement
 A selected object is not removed from the population

 Stratified sampling:
 Partition the data set, and draw samples from each

partition (proportionally, i.e., approximately the same

percentage of the data)
 Used in conjunction with skewed data
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Sampling: With or without Replacement

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

SRSW
R

Raw Data
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 Data Cube Aggregation
 Data cube can represent reduced data after operations such as
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 aggregated information should be answered using
data cube, when possible
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 Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

os sy
l
Original Data
Approximated

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Data Preprocessing: An Overview

 Data Quality
 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing
 Data Cleaning
 Data Integration
 Data Reduction
 Data Transformation and Data Discretization
 Summary
31
 Data Transformation
 Data are transformed or consolidated into forms
appropriate for mining
 A function that maps the entire set of values of a given
attribute to a new set of replacement values such that
each old value can be identified with one of the new
values
 Methods
 Smoothing: Remove noise from data
 Attribute/feature construction
 New attributes constructed from the given ones
 Aggregation: Summarization, data cube construction
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 Cond..
 Normalization: Scaled to fall within a smaller, specified range such as [−1, 1] or
[0.0, 1.0].
 min-max normalization
 z-score normalization
 normalization by decimal scaling
 Discretization: Raw values are replaced by interval labels. Concept
hierarchy climbing
 Raw values of a numeric attribute (e.g., age) are replaced by interval
labels (e.g., 0–10, 11–20, etc.) or conceptual labels (e.g., youth, adult,
senior). The labels, in turn, can be recursively organized into higher-level
concepts, resulting in a concept hierarchy for the numeric attribute
 Ex: salary can be categorized into concept hierarchy

 Concept hierarchy generation for nominal data, where attributes such as

street can be generalized to higher-level concepts, like city or country.
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 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  12,000

normalized (1.0 to
0) [0.0, 1.0].
 73,600
0  0.716
98,000  12,000
Then $73600 is mapped to
 Z-score normalization (μ: mean, σ: standard deviation):
v  A
v' 
 A

73,600  54,000
 1.225
16,000
 Ex. Let μ = 54,000, σ = 16,000. Then
 Normalization by decimal scaling
v
v' j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(|ν’|) < 1
10
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 Data Discretization Methods
 Typical methods: All the methods can be applied recursively
 Binning
 Top-down split, unsupervised
 Histogram analysis
 Top-down split, unsupervised
 Clustering analysis (unsupervised, top-down split or bottom-
up merge)
 Decision-tree analysis (supervised, top-down split)
 Correlation (e.g., 2) analysis (unsupervised, bottom-up
merge)

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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 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

36
 Discretization by Classification &
Correlation Analysis
 Classification (e.g., decision tree analysis)
 Supervised: Given class labels, e.g., cancerous vs. benign
 Top-down, recursive split
 Correlation analysis (e.g., Chi-merge: χ2-based discretization)
 Supervised: use class information
 Bottom-up merge: find the best neighboring intervals (those
having similar distributions of classes, i.e., low χ 2 values) to
merge
 Merge performed recursively, until a predefined stopping
condition

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 Concept Hierarchy Generation

 Concept hierarchy organizes concepts (i.e., attribute values)

hierarchically and is usually associated with each dimension in a
data warehouse
 Concept hierarchy formation: Recursively reduce the data by
collecting and replacing low level concepts (such as numeric
values for age) by higher level concepts (such as youth, adult, or
senior)

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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
 Steps
 sort the attributes in ascending order based on the number

of distinct values in each attribute

 generate the hierarchy from the top down according to the

sorted order, with the first attribute at the top level and the
last attribute at the bottom level
 modify it to reflect desired semantic relationships among

the attributes, if required

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 Automatic Concept Hierarchy Generation
 Example: Consider a set of location-oriented attributes—street,
country, province or state, and city— from a database
 A concept hierarchy for location can be generated automatically
 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

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 Summary
 Data quality: accuracy, completeness, consistency,
timeliness, believability, interpretability
 Data cleaning: e.g. missing/noisy values, outliers
 Data integration from multiple sources:
 Entity identification problem; Remove redundancies;
Detect inconsistencies
 Data reduction
 Dimensionality reduction; Numerosity reduction; Data
compression
 Data transformation and data discretization
 Normalization; Concept hierarchy generation
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