UNDERSTANDING DATA
Data: A collection of facts, figures, or symbols that can be processed to gain information.
For eg.
Name, age, gender, contact details, etc., of a person.
Transactions data generated through banking, ticketing, shopping, etc.
whether online or offline
Images, graphics, animations, audio, video
Documents and web pages
Online posts, comments and messages
Signals generated by sensors
Satellite data including meteorological data, communication data, earth
observation data, etc.
Importance of Data:
Data is crucial for informed decision-making, problem-solving, and understanding trends,
patterns, and behaviors in various fields
Examples of Importance of Data:
• The electronic voting machines are used for recording the votes cast. Subsequently,
the voting data from all the machines are accumulated to declare election results in a
short time as compared to manual counting of ballot papers.
• Scientists record data while doing experiments to calculate and compare results.
• Pharmaceutical companies record data while trying out a new medicine to see its
effectiveness.
• Libraries maintain data about books in the library and the membership of the
library.
• The search engines give us results after analysing large volume of data available on
the websites across World Wide Web (www).
• Weather alerts are generated by analysing data received from various satellites.
Types of Data:
Structured Data
Unstructured Data
Difference between structured and unstructured data:
STRUCTURED UNSTRUCTURED
Data which is organized and can be recorded in Data is not organized and cannot be recorded in
a well-defined format. well-defined format.
Data is usually stored in rows and columns There is no particular format or fixed structure
where each column represents different data for for the data
a particular parameter called attribute/
characteristic/variable and each row represents
data of an observation for different attributes.
Any table with row and column structure Email, Newspaper, (image, graphics,
audio/video). Other examples include
text documents, business reports, books,
audio/video files, social media messages.
Data Collection:
Data collection here means identifying already available data or collecting from the
appropriate sources. E.g.
Sales data are available with Shopkeeper has stored the The shopkeeper has not
the shopkeeper in a diary or sales data in a digital format recorded the data so far
register. in a CSV (comma separated
values) file
Programmer has to convert Programmer can use this Programmer has to write
data to digital format directly of convert to DBMS programs to store and
retrieve the data.
Data Storage:
Data storage is the process of storing data on storage devices so that data can be retrieved
later.
Devices used to store data:
1. Hard Disk Drive (HDD),
2. Solid State Drive (SSD),
3. CD/DVD,
4. Tape Drive,
5. Pen Drive,
6. Memory Card
Data is stored in form of:
1. images,
2. documents,
3. audios/ videos, etc.
4. as files in our computers
Data Processing: Data needs to be processed get results and after analysing those results,
we make conclusions or decisions
Statistical Techniques for processing data: We need to process data to get information.
Statistical techniques /summarization methods are applied on tabular data for tis easy
comprehension.
Measures of Central Tendency: A measure of central tendency is a single value that gives
some idea about data.
The three most common measures of central tendency are
Mean
Median
Mode
Mean: Mean is simply the average of numeric values of an attribute. Mean is also called
average.
𝜮𝒙𝒊
Given N values x1,x2,x3,x4…xn, mean is computed as ̅
𝒙= 𝑵
Test Scores: 22, 99, 102, 33, 57 mean 𝑥̅ = 40
An outlier is an exceptionally large or small value, in comparison to other values of the data.
Mean is not a suitable choice if there are outliers in the data.
Median: Median is considered as the middle most number.
To calculate median:
1. All the values are sorted in ascending order.
2. When there are odd number of values, the value in middle position is the
median.
3. When there are even number of values, the median is the average of two middle
values.
Mode:
1. Mode is defined most frequently occurring value.
2. A data set has no modes if each value occurs only once.
3. There may be multiple modes if many values have the same highest frequency.
4. Mode can be found for both numeric and non-numeric data.
Measures of variability: (measures of dispersion)
They refer to the spread/variation of values around the mean.
They indicate degree of diversity in the data set.
The common measures of dispersion or variability are
1. Range
2. Standard Deviation
Range:
1. It is the difference between maximum and minimum values of the data. Range can
be calculated only for numeric data.
2. Range = Maximum(M) – Minimum(S)= M-S.
Standard Deviation:
1. Standard Deviation refers to differences within the group or set of data of a variable.
2. It measures the spread of data.
3. Smaller value of standard deviation means data is less spread.
4. Larger value of standard deviation means data is more spread.
Given n values x1,x2,x3,x4,x5,…xn Standard deviation is given by
(𝑥𝑖 −𝑥̅ )2
𝜎=√ 𝑁
Calculate the standard deviation of the following test data.
Test Scores: 22, 99, 102, 33, 57, mean 𝑥 ̅=40,
Test Difference Square of difference from
Score from mean mean
22 -18 324
78 38 1444
10 -30 900
33 -7 49
57 17 289
3006
3006
𝜎=√ 𝜎 = √601 ⋅ 2 𝜎 = 24.52
5
Important questions:
1. Differentiate between structured and unstructured data giving one example.
2. Consider the temperature (in Celsius) of 7 days of a week as 34, 34,27, 28, 27,34,34.
Identify the appropriate statistical technique to be used to calculate
a. Average temperature
b. Find the temperature range of the week
c. Most frequently occurring temperature
d. Find standard deviation temperature
3. Identify the type of data being collected and/or generated in the following scenarios
a. Recording a video
b. Marking attendance by a teacher
c. Writing tweets
d. Filling application form online.
4. Explain the importance of data with the help of examples.
5. Explain data collection in different scenarios.
6. Height of students of a class in cm is 95, 98,102,110, 110, 111,112,118,99, 105. Find
all the measures of central tendency and measures of variation.
7. Explain the concept of data storage.
8. Explain mean with an example.
9. Explain median with an example.
10. Explain mode with an example.
11. Explain measures of variability.
12. Explain Range with a example.
13. Find the range for the data set 32, 41, 28, 54, 26, 38.
14. Explain standard deviation.