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
1
 Data Quality: Why Preprocess the
Data?

 Measures for data quality: A multidimensional view


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?
2
 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
3
 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
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)

Jan. 1 as everyone’s birthday?
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?
 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 possible outliers)

9
 Data Cleaning as a Process
 Data discrepancy detection
 Use metadata (e.g., domain, range, dependency,

distribution)
 Check field overloading

 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
10
 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
 Entity identification problem:
 Identify real world entities from multiple data sources (Cust
Id, Cust Num)
 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

12
 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
 Careful integration of the data from multiple sources
may help reduce/avoid redundancies and
inconsistencies and improve mining speed and
quality
13
Correlation Analysis (Nominal Data)
 Χ2 (chi-square) test
2
(Observed  Expected )
 2 
Expected
 The larger the Χ2 value, the more likely the
variables are related
 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

14
 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

 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
15
Correlation Analysis (Numeric Data)

 Correlation coefficient (also called Pearson’s product

moment coefficient)

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

where n is the number of tuples, and are the respective

A B
means of A and B, σA and σB are the respective 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
16
Visually Evaluating Correlation

Scatter plots
showing the
similarity from
–1 to 1.

17
 Correlation (viewed as linear
relationship)
 Correlation measures the linear relationship
between objects
 To compute correlation, we standardize
data objects, A and B, and then take their
dot product
a 'k (ak  mean( A)) / std ( A)

b'k (bk  mean( B )) / std ( B )

correlation( A, B)  A' B'

18
 Covariance (Numeric Data)
 Covariance is similar to correlation

Correlation coefficient:
where n is the number of tuples, and are the respective mean
or expected values of A and B, A σ andBσ are the respective
A B

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
19
 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
21
21
 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
22
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)

23
 Mapping Data to a New Space
 Fourier transform
 Wavelet transform

Two Sine Waves Two Sine Waves + Noise Frequency

24
 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

25
 Wavelet
Transformation
Haar2 Daubechie4
 Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for linear signal
processing, multi-resolution 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 0’s, 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, until reaches the desired length

26
 Wavelet Decomposition
 Wavelets: A math tool for space-efficient
hierarchical decomposition of functions
 S = [2, 2, 0, 2, 3, 5, 4, 4] can be transformed to S^
= [23/4, -11/4, 1/2, 0, 0, -1, -1, 0]
 Compression: many small detail coefficients can
be replaced by 0’s, and only the significant
coefficients are retained

27
 Haar Wavelet Coefficients
Coefficient
Hierarchical “Supports”
2.75
decomposition 2.75 +
structure (a.k.a. +
“error tree”) + -1.25
-
-1.25
+ -
0.5
+
0.5
- +
0
- 0
+
-
0 -1 -1 0
+
-
+ + 0
- - + - + -
-1
+
-+
-+
2 2 0 2 3 5 4 4
-1
Original frequency distribution 0 -+
28
-
 Why Wavelet Transform?
 Use hat-shape filters
 Emphasize region where points cluster

 Suppress weaker information in their boundaries

 Effective removal of outliers

 Insensitive to noise, insensitive to input order

 Multi-resolution
 Detect arbitrary shaped clusters at different

scales
 Efficient
 Complexity O(N)

 Only applicable to low dimensional data

29
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
 Find a projection that captures the largest amount of variation in data
 The original data are projected onto a much smaller space, resulting in
dimensionality reduction. We find the eigenvectors of the covariance
matrix, and these eigenvectors define the new space

x2

x1
30
 Principal Component Analysis
(Steps)
 Given N data vectors from n-dimensions, find k ≤ n orthogonal vectors
(principal components) that can be best used to represent data

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 is
possible to reconstruct a good approximation of the original data)
 Works for numeric data only

31
 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

32
Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

os sy
l
Original Data
Approximated

33
 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
34
 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
 Methods
 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
35
 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
73,600  12,000 normalized to
(1.0  0)  0 0.716
[0.0, 1.0]. Then $73,000 is mapped to
98, 000  12, 000

 Z-score normalization (μ: mean, σ: standard deviation):

v  A
v' 
 A

73,600  54,000
1.225
 Ex. Let μ = 54,000, σ = 16,000. Then16,000
 Normalization by decimal scaling
v
v'  j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(|ν’|) < 1
10
36
 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

Numeric—real numbers, e.g., integer or real numbers
 Discretization: Divide the range of a continuous attribute into
intervals

Interval labels can then be used to replace actual data values

Reduce data size by discretization

Supervised vs. unsupervised

Split (top-down) vs. merge (bottom-up)

Discretization can be performed recursively on an attribute

Prepare for further analysis, e.g., classification
37
 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)
38
 Simple Discretization: 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
 Good data scaling
 Managing categorical attributes can be tricky
39
 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
40
 Class Labels
(Binning vs. Clustering)

Data Equal interval width

(binning)

Equal frequency (binning) K-means clustering leads to better

results
41
Classification & Correlation
Analysis
 Classification (e.g., decision tree analysis)

Supervised: Given class labels, e.g., cancerous vs. benign

Using entropy to determine split point (discretization point)

Top-down, recursive split

Details to be covered in Chapter 7
 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 χ2 values) to
merge

Merge performed recursively, until a predefined stopping
condition
42
 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.
43
 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}
44
 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

45