Data Preprocessing

Data Preprocessing
Why preprocess the data?
Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
 Why Data
Preprocessing?
Data in the real world is dirty
incomplete: lacking attribute values, lacking certain
attributes of interest, or containing only aggregate data
noisy: containing errors or outliers
inconsistent: containing discrepancies in codes or
names
No quality data, no quality mining results!
Quality decisions must be based on quality data
Data warehouse needs consistent integration of quality
data
Required for both OLAP and Data Mining!
 Why can Data be
Incomplete?
Attributes of interest are not available (e.g.,
customer information for sales transaction data)
Data were not considered important at the time
of transactions, so they were not recorded!
Data not recorder because of misunderstanding
or malfunctions
Data may have been recorded and later deleted!
Missing/unknown values for some data
Why can Data be
Noisy/Inconsistent?
Faulty instruments for data collection
Human or computer errors
Errors in data transmission
Technology limitations (e.g., sensor data come at
a faster rate than they can be processed)
Inconsistencies in naming conventions or data
codes (e.g., 2/5/2002 could be 2 May 2002 or 5
Feb 2002)
Duplicate tuples, which were received twice
should also be removed
Major Tasks in Data
outliers=exceptions!
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
Forms of data preprocessing
 Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
 Data Cleaning
Data cleaning tasks
Fill in missing values
Identify outliers and smooth out noisy data
Correct inconsistent data
 How to Handle Missing
Data?
Ignore the tuple: usually done when class label is missing
(assuming the tasks in classification)not effective when the
percentage of missing values per attribute varies considerably.
Fill in the missing value manually: tedious + infeasible?
Use a global constant to fill in the missing value: e.g.,
unknown, a new class?!
Use the attribute mean to fill in the missing value
Use the attribute mean for all samples belonging to the same
class to fill in the missing value: smarter
Use the most probable value to fill in the missing value:
inference-based such as Bayesian formula or decision tree
How to Handle Missing
Data?
Age Income Religion Gender
23 24,200 Muslim M
39 ? Christian F
45 45,390 ? F

Fill missing values using aggregate functions (e.g., average)

or probabilistic estimates on global value distribution
E.g., put the average income here, or put the most
probable income based on the fact that the person is 39
years old
E.g., put the most frequent religion here
 Noisy Data
Noise: random error or variance in a measured
variable
Incorrect attribute values may exist 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
 How to Handle Noisy Data?
Smoothing techniques
Binning method:
first sort data and partition into (equi-depth) bins
then one can smooth by bin means, smooth by bin
median, smooth by bin boundaries, etc.
Clustering
detect and remove outliers
Combined computer and human inspection
computer detects suspicious values, which are then
checked by humans
Regression
smooth by fitting the data into regression functions
Use Concept hierarchies
use concept hierarchies, e.g., price value -> expensive
Simple Discretization
Methods: Binning
Equal-width (distance) partitioning:
It 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:
It divides the range into N intervals, each containing
approximately same number of samples
Good data scaling good handing of skewed data
Simple Discretization
Methods: Binning
Example: customer ages number
of values

Equi-width
binning: 0-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60-70 70-80

Equi-width
binning: 0-22 22-31 62-80
38-44 48-55
32-38 44-48 55-62
Smoothing using Binning
Methods
* Sorted data for price (in dollars): 4, 8, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 25,
26, 28, 29, 34
* Partition into (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: [4,15],[21,25],[26,34]
- Bin 1: 4, 4, 4, 15
- Bin 2: 21, 21, 25, 25
- Bin 3: 26, 26, 26, 34
 Cluster
Analysis
salary

cluster

outlier

age
 Regression
y (salary)
Example of linear regression

Y1 y=x+1

X1 x (age)
 Inconsistent Data
Inconsistent data are handled by:
Manual correction (expensive and tedious)
Use routines designed to detect inconsistencies
and manually correct them. E.g., the routine may
use the check global constraints (age>10) or
functional dependencies
Other inconsistencies (e.g., between names of
the same attribute) can be corrected during the
data integration process
 Data Preprocessing
Why preprocess the data?
Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
 Data
Integration
Data integration:
combines data from multiple sources into a coherent store
Schema integration
integrate metadata from different sources
metadata: data about the data (i.e., data descriptors)
Entity identification problem: identify real world entities
from multiple data sources, e.g., A.cust-id B.cust-#
Detecting and resolving data value conflicts
for the same real world entity, attribute values from
different sources are different (e.g., J.D.Smith and Jonh
Smith may refer to the same person)
possible reasons: different representations, different
scales, e.g., metric vs. British units (inches vs. cm)
 Handling
Redundant
Redundant Data
data occur often whenin integration of
Data
multiple Integration
databases
The same attribute may have different names in different

databases
One attribute may be a derived attribute in another
table, e.g., annual revenue
Redundant data may be able to be detected by
correlation analysis
Careful integration of the data from multiple
sources may help reduce/avoid redundancies and
inconsistencies and improve mining speed and
quality
 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 ones
Normalization: Why
normalization?
Speeds-up some learning techniques (ex.
neural networks)
Helps prevent attributes with large ranges
outweigh ones with small ranges
Example:
income has range 3000-200000
age has range 10-80

gender has domain M/F

Data Transformation:
Normalization
min-max normalization
v minA
v' (new _ maxA new _ minA) new _ minA
maxA minA
e.g. convert age=30 to range 0-1, when
min=10,max=80. new_age=(30-10)/(80-10)=2/7
z-score normalization
v meanA
v'
stand_devA
normalization by decimal scaling
v
v' j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(| v ' |)<1
10
 Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
 Data Reduction
Strategies
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
Obtains a reduced representation of the data set that is
much smaller in volume but yet produces the same (or
almost the same) analytical results
Data reduction strategies
Data cube aggregation
Dimensionality reduction
Data compression
Numerosity reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
 Data Cube Aggregation
The lowest level of a data cube
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
 Dimensionality
Reduction
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
decision-tree induction
 Heuristic Feature Selection
Methods
There are 2 possible sub-features of d features
d

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
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
Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

s s y
lo
Original Data
Approximated
Principal Component Analysis
or Karhuren-Loeve (K-L)
method
Given N data vectors from k-dimensions, find c

<= k orthogonal vectors that can be best used

to represent data
The original data set is reduced to one consisting of N
data vectors on c principal components (reduced
dimensions)
Each data vector is a linear combination of the c
principal component vectors
Works for numeric data only
Used when the number of dimensions is large
 Principal Component Analysis

X1, X2: original axes (attributes) X2

Y1,Y2: principal components
Y1
Y2
significant component
(high variance)

X1

Order principal components by significance and eliminate weaker ones

 Numerosity
Reduction:
Parametric methods
Reduce the volume
Assume the data fits some model, estimate model

of data
parameters, store only the parameters, and discard the
data (except possible outliers)
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
 Histograms
A popular data
reduction technique
Divide data into
buckets and store
average (or sum) for
each bucket
Can be constructed
optimally in one
dimension using
dynamic programming
Related to
quantization problems.
Histogram types
Equal-width histograms:
It divides the range into N intervals of equal size
Equal-depth (frequency) partitioning:
It divides the range into N intervals, each containing
approximately same number of samples
V-optimal:
It considers all histogram types for a given number of
buckets and chooses the one with the least variance.
MaxDiff:
After sorting the data to be approximated, it defines the
borders of the buckets at points where the adjacent
values have the maximum difference
Example: split 1,1,4,5,5,7,9,14,16,18,27,30,30,32 to three
buckets MaxDiff 27-18 and 14-9
Histograms
 Clustering
Partitions data set into clusters, and models it by
one representative from each cluster
Can be very effective if data is clustered but not
if data is smeared
There are many choices of clustering definitions
and clustering algorithms, further detailed in
Chapter 7
 Cluster
Analysis
salary
the distance between points in the
same cluster should be small
the distance between points in different
clusters should be large
cluster

outlier

age
 Hierarchical Reduction
Use multi-resolution structure with different
degrees of reduction
Hierarchical clustering is often performed but tends
to define partitions of data sets rather than
clusters
Parametric methods are usually not amenable to
hierarchical representation
Hierarchical aggregation
An index tree hierarchically divides a data set into
partitions by value range of some attributes
Each partition can be considered as a bucket
Thus an index tree with aggregates stored at each node is
a hierarchical histogram
 Data Preprocessing
Why preprocess the data?
Data cleaning
Data integration and transformation
Data reduction
Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation
Summary
Discretization
Three types of attributes:
Nominal values from an unordered set
Ordinal values from an ordered set
Continuous real numbers
Discretization:
divide the range of a continuous attribute into
intervals
why?
Some classification algorithms only accept
categorical attributes.
Reduce data size by discretization
Prepare for further analysis
Discretization and Concept
hierachy
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.
Concept hierarchies
reduce the data by collecting and replacing low level
concepts (such as numeric values for the attribute age)
by higher level concepts (such as young, middle-aged,
or senior).
Discretization and concept
hierarchy generation for
Binning/Smoothing (see sections before)
numeric data
Histogram analysis (see sections before)

Clustering analysis (see sections before)

Entropy-based discretization

Segmentation by natural partitioning

 m
Entropy: Ent ( S ) pi log 2 ( pi )
Entropy-Based 1
i 1

Discretization
Given a set of samples S, if S is partitioned into two
intervals S1 and S2 using boundary T, the information
gain I(S,T) after partitioning is
| S1 | | S2 |
I (S , T ) Ent ( S 1) Ent ( S 2)
|S| |S|
The boundary that maximizes the information gain
over all possible boundaries is selected as a binary
discretization.
The process is recursively applied to partitions
obtained until some stopping criterion is met, e.g.,

Ent ( S ) I (T , S )
Experiments show that it may reduce data size and
improve classification accuracy
Segmentation by natural
partitioning
Users often like to see numerical ranges partitioned into
relatively uniform, easy-to-read intervals that appear intuitive
or natural. E.g., [50-60] better than [51.223-60.812]
The 3-4-5 rule can be used to segment numerical 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 equiwidth intervals
for 3,6,9 or 2-3-2 for 7
* If it covers 2, 4, or 8 distinct values at the most significant
digit, partition the range into 4 equiwidth intervals
* If it covers 1, 5, or 10 distinct values at the most significant
digit, partition the range into 5 equiwidth intervals

The rule can be recursively applied for the resulting intervals

Concept hierarchy
generation for categorical
Categorical attributes: finite, possibly large domain, with no
data

ordering among the values

Example: item type

Specification of a partial ordering of attributes explicitly at
the schema level by users or experts
Example: location is split by domain experts to
street<city<state<country
Specification of a portion of a hierarchy by explicit data
grouping
Specification of a set of attributes, but not of their partial
ordering
Specification of only a partial set of attributes
Specification of a set of
attributes
Concept hierarchy can be automatically
generated based on the number of distinct
values per attribute in the given attribute set.
The attribute with the most distinct values is
placed at the lowest level of the hierarchy.

country 15 distinct values

province_or_ state 65 distinct

values
city 3567 distinct values

street 674,339 distinct values