Why Data Preprocessing?

Data in the real world is dirty incomplete: lacking attribute values, lacking certain attributes of interest, or containing only aggregate data

e.g., occupation= e.g., Salary=-10

noisy: containing errors or outliers

inconsistent: containing discrepancies in codes or names

e.g., Age=42 Birthday=03/07/1997 e.g., Was rating 1,2,3, now rating A, B, C e.g., discrepancy between duplicate records

Major Tasks in Data Preprocessing

Data cleaning

Fill in missing values, smooth noisy data, identify or remove outliers, and resolve inconsistencies Integration of multiple databases, data cubes, or files Normalization and aggregation Obtains reduced representation in volume but produces the same or similar analytical results Part of data reduction but with particular importance, especially for numerical data

Data integration

Data transformation

Data reduction

Data discretization

Forms of Data Preprocessing

Data Cleaning

Importance Data cleaning is one of the three biggest problems in data warehousingRalph Kimball Data cleaning is the number one problem in data warehousingDCI survey

Data cleaning tasks

Fill in missing values Identify outliers and smooth out noisy data Correct inconsistent data Resolve redundancy caused by data integration

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 equipment malfunction

Missing data may be due to

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.

How to Handle Missing Data?

Ignore the tuple: usually done when class label is missing (assuming the tasks in classificationnot effective when the percentage 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

Noisy Data

Noise: random error or variance in a measured variable Incorrect attribute values may 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?

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

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

Regression
y
Y1

Y1

y=x+1

X1

Cluster Analysis

Data Integration

Data integration: Combines data from multiple sources into a coherent store Schema integration: e.g., A.cust-id B.cust-# Integrate metadata from different sources Entity identification problem: Identify real world entities from multiple data sources, e.g., Bill Clinton = William Clinton

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

Careful integration of the data from multiple sources may help reduce/avoid redundancies and inconsistencies and improve mining speed and quality

Correlation Analysis (Numerical Data)

Correlation coefficient (also called Pearsons product moment coefficient)

rA, B

( A A)(B B) ( AB) n AB
(n 1)AB (n 1)AB

where n is the number of tuples, A and B are the respective means of A and B, A and B are the respective standard deviation of A and B, and (AB) is the sum of the AB cross-product.

If rA,B > 0, A and B are positively correlated (As values increase as Bs). The higher, the stronger correlation.
rA,B = 0: independent; rA,B < 0: negatively correlated
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 14

July 14, 2012

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 New attributes constructed from the given ones
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 15

Attribute/feature construction

July 14, 2012

Data Transformation: Normalization

Min-max normalization: to [new_minA, new_maxA]

v'

v minA (new _ maxA new _ minA) new _ minA maxA minA

Ex. Let income range $12,000 to $98,000 normalized to [0.0, 73 1.0]. Then $73,000 is mapped to 98,,600 12,,000 (1.0 0) 0 0.716 000 12 000

Z-score normalization (: mean, : standard deviation):

v'

v A

Ex. Let = 54,000, = 16,000. Then

Normalization by decimal scaling

73,600 54 ,000 1.225 16 ,000

v v' j 10
July 14, 2012

Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(||) < 1

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 16

Data Reduction Strategies

Why data reduction? A database/data 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 Obtain a reduced representation of the data set that is much smaller in volume but yet produce the same (or almost the same) analytical results Data reduction strategies Data cube aggregation: Dimensionality reduction e.g., remove unimportant attributes Data Compression Numerosity reduction e.g., fit data into models Discretization and concept hierarchy generation
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 17

July 14, 2012

Data Cube 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

Use the smallest representation which is enough to solve the task

Reference appropriate levels

Queries regarding aggregated information should be answered using data cube, when possible
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 18

July 14, 2012

Attribute Subset Selection

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
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 19

July 14, 2012

Example of Decision Tree Induction

Initial attribute set: {A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6} A4 ? A1? A6?

Class 1
>
July 14, 2012

Class 2

Class 1

Class 2

Reduced attribute set: {A1, A4, A6}

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 20

Dimensionality Reduction: Wavelet Transformation

Discrete wavelet transform (DWT): linear signal processing, multi-resolutional analysis

Haar2

Daubechie4

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 0s, 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
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 21

July 14, 2012

Dimensionality Reduction: Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Given N data vectors from n-dimensions, find k n orthogonal vectors (principal components) that can be best used to represent data Steps 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 Used when the number of dimensions is large
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 22

July 14, 2012

Numerosity Reduction

Reduce data volume by choosing alternative, smaller forms of data representation Parametric methods Assume the data fits some model, estimate model parameters, store only the parameters, and discard the data (except possible outliers) Example: Log-linear modelsobtain 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
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 23

July 14, 2012

Discretization

Discretization:

Divide the range of a continuous attribute into intervals Some classification algorithms only accept categorical attributes. Reduce data size by discretization Prepare for further analysis

July 14, 2012

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

24

Discretization and Concept Hierarchy

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 Supervised vs. unsupervised

Split (top-down) vs. merge (bottom-up)

Discretization can be performed recursively on an attribute

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 young, middle-aged, or senior)

July 14, 2012

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

25

Discretization and Concept Hierarchy Generation for Numeric Data

Typical methods: All the methods can be applied recursively

Binning Histogram analysis Clustering analysis

July 14, 2012

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

26

Concept Hierarchy Generation for Categorical Data

Specification of a partial/total ordering of attributes explicitly at the schema level by users or experts

street < city < state < country

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

July 14, 2012

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

27

Automatic Concept Hierarchy Generation

country

15 distinct values
365 distinct values 3567 distinct values

province_or_ state
city street

674,339 distinct values

July 14, 2012

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

28