Data Quality: Why Preprocess the Data?

◼ Measures for data quality: A multidimensional view

◼ Accuracy: correct or wrong?
◼ Completeness: not recorded, unavailable, …
◼ Consistency: some modified but some not, dangling, …
◼ Timeliness: timely update?
◼ Believability: how trustable the data is?
◼ Interpretability: how easily the data can be
understood?

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 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing

◼ Data cleaning
◼ Data integration
◼ Data reduction
◼ Data transformation and data discretization

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 Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing
◼ Data cleaning
◼ Fill in missing values
◼ smooth noisy data
◼ identify or remove outliers
◼ resolve inconsistencies
◼ Data integration
◼ Integration of multiple databases, data cubes, or files
◼ Data reduction
◼ Dimensionality reduction
◼ Numerosity reduction (replacing data by alternate models(regression, histogram)
◼ Data compression
◼ Data transformation and data discretization
◼ Normalization
◼ Concept hierarchy generation
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 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)
◼ Jan. 1 as everyone’s birthday?
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 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 measures of central tendency
◼ the attribute mean or median for all samples belonging to
the same class: smarter
◼ the most probable 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 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

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 How to Handle Noisy Data?

◼ Binning
◼ Smooth the sorted data by its 'neighbourhood’

◼ 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.

◼ smooth by bin means replaces each value in the bin by the
mean value of the bin.
◼ smooth by bin median replaces each value in the bin by the
median value of the bin.
◼ smooth by bin boundaries replaces each value in the bin by
the closest boundary value ie min or max.

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 How to Handle Noisy Data?

◼ Regression
◼ smooth by fitting the data into regression functions

◼ Linear Regression, Multiple Regression

◼ Clustering
◼ detect and remove outliers

◼ Combined computer and human inspection

◼ detect suspicious values and check by human (e.g.,

deal with possible outliers)

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 Data Cleaning as a Process
◼ Data discrepancy detection
◼ Use metadata (e.g., domain, range, dependency, distribution)

◼ 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 interface

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 Data Integration
◼ Combines data from multiple sources into a coherent store.
◼ Schema integration: e.g., [Link]-id  [Link]-#
◼ 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

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 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 and covariance analysis

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 Correlation
❑Correlation can be defined as a measurement that is used to
quantify the relationship between variables.
❑If an increase (or decrease) in one variable causes a
corresponding increase (or decrease) in another then the two
variables are said to be directly correlated.
❑If an increase in one causes a decrease in another or vice versa,
then the variables are said to be indirectly correlated.
❑If a change in an independent variable does not cause a change
in the dependent variable then they are uncorrelated.
❑Thus, correlation can be positive (direct correlation), negative
(indirect correlation), or zero. This relationship is given by
the correlation coefficient.
 Correlation
❑A correlation coefficient such as
Pearson's correlation coefficient is
used to give a numeric value that
depicts the strength as well as the
direction of the correlation.
❑The scatter plot gives the
correlation between two variables x
and y for individual data points as
shown below.
❑The formula for Pearson
Correlation Coefficient, (written
as rxy) for sample of size n is given
as:
 Correlation Example

Example 1. Given the following population data. Find the Pearson correlation coefficient
between x and y for this data.

x 600 800 1000

y 1200 1000 2000

 Correlation Example

6 12 -2 -2 4 4 4
8 10 0 -4 0 16 0
10 20 2 6 4 36 12
24 42 0 0 8 56 16
 Correlation Example

Using the correlation coefficient formula,

Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.756
Visually Evaluating Correlation

Scatter plots
showing the
similarity from
–1 to 1.

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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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 Correlation Analysis (Nominal Data)
Chi-Square test

Fiction\ Chess Play chess Not play chess Sum (row)

◼
Like science fiction 250 200 450

Not like science fiction 50 1000 1050

Sum(col.) 300 1200 1500

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 Chi-Square test: 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

◼ Null Hypotheses: There is no relation between the two

variables.
◼ Significant Hypotheses: There is a significant relation
between the two variables.
◼ Significance Level=0.05

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 Chi-Square test: 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

(Observed − Expected) 2
 2
=
Expected

(250 − 90) 2 (50 − 210) 2 (200 − 360) 2 (1000 − 840) 2

 =
2
+ + + = 507.93
90 210 360 840

Degrees of freedom=(row-1) X (col-1)=(2-1) X (2-1)=1 which gives

χ2(tabular)=3.84
Since 3.84<507.93, Significant Hypotheses holds true.

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Percentage points for Chi-Square
distribution

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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 independence23
 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.

 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
◼ 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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Data Reduction 1: Dimensionality Reduction
◼ Curse of dimensionality
◼ When dimensionality increases, data becomes increasingly sparse
◼ Density and distance between points, which is critical to clustering, outlier
analysis, becomes less meaningful
◼ The possible combinations of subspaces will grow exponentially
◼ Dimensionality reduction
◼ Avoid the curse of dimensionality
◼ Help eliminate irrelevant features and reduce noise
◼ Reduce time and space required in data mining
◼ Allow easier visualization
◼ Dimensionality reduction techniques
◼ Wavelet transforms
◼ Principal Component Analysis
◼ Supervised and nonlinear techniques (e.g., feature selection)

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 Mapping Data to a New Space
◼ Fourier transform
◼ Wavelet transform

Two Sine Waves Two Sine Waves + Noise Frequency

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 What Is Wavelet Transform?
◼ Decomposes a signal into
different frequency subbands
◼ Applicable to n-
dimensional signals
◼ Data are transformed to
preserve relative distance
between objects at different
levels of resolution
◼ Allow natural clusters to
become more distinguishable
◼ Used for image compression

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 Wavelet Transformation
Haar2 Daubechie4
◼ Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for 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

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Principal Component
Analysis(PCA)
PCA Example
PCA Example
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 PCA Example
❑Next, rotate the line and project the points on to the new line and
calculate the sum of squared distances.
❑Repeat until we get a line with the largest sum of squared
distances between the projected points and the origin.
❑This line is called Principal Component 1(PC1)
❑ PC1 has a slope of 0.25 ie for every 4 units that we go along X
axis, we go 1 unit along Y axis. ie data is more spread out along X
axis.
❑PC1= (4 parts) Gene1 + (1 parts) Gene2 ie a linear
combination of both the genes.
❑Hence, Gene1 is more important to describe how far the data is
spread out on X axis.
PCA Example
 PCA Example

◼
 PCA Example

❑ This unit vector a is

called eigen vector for
PC1
❑ Also, the sum of
squared distances,
SS(distances) is the
eigenvalue for PC1
❑ Now, we will find PC2
❑ PC2 will be the line
through the origin
perpendicular to PC1
 PCA Example

❑ This unit vector a is called

eigen vector for PC1
❑ Also, the sum of squared
distances, SS(distances) is the
eigenvalue for PC1
❑ Now, we will find PC2
❑ PC2 will be the line through the
origin perpendicular to PC1
 PCA Example

❑ This unit vector a is called

eigen vector for PC1
❑ Also, the sum of squared
distances, SS(distances) is the
eigenvalue for PC1
❑ Now, we will find PC2
❑ PC2 will be the line through the
origin perpendicular to PC1
 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

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 Attribute Subset Selection

◼ There are 2d possible attribute combinations of d attributes

◼ Typical heuristic attribute selection methods:
◼ Best single attribute under the attribute independence

assumption: choose by significance tests

◼ Forward Selection: step-wise feature selection

◼ The best single-attribute is picked first

◼ Then next best attribute condition to the first, ...

◼ Backward elimination:

◼ Pick the set of all attributes.

◼ Repeatedly eliminate the worst attribute

◼ Best is to combine attribute selection and elimination

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Attribute Creation (Feature Generation)
◼ Create new attributes (features) that can capture the
important information in a data set more effectively than
the original ones
◼ Three general methodologies
◼ Attribute extraction

◼ Domain-specific

◼ Mapping data to new space (see: data reduction)

◼ E.g., Fourier transformation, wavelet

transformation, manifold approaches (not covered)

◼ Attribute construction

◼ Combining features (see: discriminative frequent

patterns in Chapter 7)
◼ Data discretization
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Data Reduction 2: 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.: Regression models

◼ Non-parametric methods
◼ Do not assume models

◼ Major families: histograms, clustering, sampling.

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 Parametric Data Reduction: Regression
◼ Linear regression
◼ Data 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

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 y
Regression Analysis
Y1

◼ Regression analysis: A collective name for

techniques for the modeling and analysis Y1’
y=x+1
of numerical data consisting of values of a
dependent variable (also called
response variable or measurement) and X1 x
of one or more independent variables (aka.
explanatory variables or predictors)
◼ Used for prediction
◼ The parameters are estimated so as to give (including forecasting of
a "best fit" of the data time-series data), inference,
hypothesis testing, and
◼ Most commonly the best fit is evaluated by
modeling of causal
using the least squares method, but
relationships
other criteria have also been used

63
 Regression Analysis
◼ 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

64
 Histogram Analysis
◼ Divide data into buckets and 40
store average (sum) for each 35
bucket
30
◼ Partitioning rules:
25
◼ Equal-width: equal bucket 20
range
15
◼ Equal-frequency (or equal- 10
depth)
5
0

100000
10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000
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 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
◼ There are many choices of clustering definitions and
clustering algorithms

66
 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
◼ Key principle: Choose a representative subset of the data
◼ Simple random sampling may have very poor
performance in the presence of skew
◼ Develop adaptive sampling methods, e.g., stratified
sampling: eg a stratified sample obtained from
customer data, where each stratum is c reated for each
customer age group.
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 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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 Data Reduction 3: 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

◼ Dimensionality and numerosity reduction may also be

considered as forms of data compression
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 Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

Original Data
Approximated

70
 Data Transformation
◼ A function that maps the entire set of values of a given attribute to a
new set of replacement values s.t. each old value can be identified
with one of the new values.
◼ Smoothing: Remove noise from data
◼ Attribute/feature construction
◼ New attributes constructed from the given ones
◼ Aggregation: Summarization, data cube construction
◼ Normalization: Scaled to fall within a smaller, specified range
◼ min-max normalization
◼ z-score normalization
◼ normalization by decimal scaling
◼ Discretization: Concept hierarchy climbing
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 Normalization
◼ Measurement units can affect the data analysis.
◼ Expressing an attribute in smaller units will lead to a larger range for
that attribute and thus gives it greater ‘effect’ or ‘weight’.
◼ Hence, it is advisable to transform data into smaller range such as [-
1, 1] or [0.0, 1.0]
◼ Normalizing the data gives equal weight to all attributes.
◼ Types of normalization:
◼ Min-max normalization: preserves the relationships among original
data.
◼ Z-score normalization: useful when the actual minimum and
maximum of attribute A are unknown, or when there are outliers that
dominate the min-max normalization
◼ Normalization by decimal scaling

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

73,600 − 54,000
◼ Ex. Let μ = 54,000, σ = 16,000. Then = 1.225
16,000
◼ 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)

74
 Concept Hierarchy Generation

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

hierarchically and is usually associated with each dimension in a data
warehouse
◼ Concept hierarchies facilitate drilling and rolling in data warehouses to
view data in multiple granularity
◼ 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)
◼ Concept hierarchies can be explicitly specified by domain experts
and/or data warehouse designers
◼ Concept hierarchy can be automatically formed for both numeric and
nominal data. For numeric data, use discretization methods shown.

75
 Concept Hierarchy Generation
for Nominal 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 of attributes: {street, city, state, country}
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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
◼ 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

77
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