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/missing: 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 / unpredictable data

8
 How to Handle Noisy Data?
 Binning
 first sort data and partition(divided ) into several buckets/equal
frequency (also called 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
y = b + mx
 Clustering
 Groups(also called Clusters) having similar values are formed

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
Various steps involved in datamining process
Data discrepancy detection
there may exist noise in data due to the following
 Manual error, system error, field overloading, poorly designed structure etc
 The discrepancy can be detected by metadata (data about data)helps in
finding the domain & datatype, range, dependency, distribution
Data should be analyzed using the following rules.
 Unique rule (attribute value should be different)
 Consecutive rule (should be no missing values b/w the lowest & highest value for
the attribute, all existing values must be unique)
 Null rule (use special characters/strings to indicate null condition)
 Use commercial tools
 Data scrubbing tools: use simple domain knowledge (e.g., postal code,

spell-check) to detect errors and make corrections

 Data auditing tools: by analyzing data to discover rules and

relationship to detect violators (e.g., correlation and clustering to find

outliers)

10
 Data Cleaning as a Process Conti….

 Data transformation (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(ex.to replace ‘post’ by
‘designation’)
Integration of the two processes
 Iterative and interactive (e.g., Potter’s Wheels)

11
 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
12
 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
 Ex : customer_id in one database, cust-number in another DB
 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
13
 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., age can be derived from DOB
 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

14
 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

15
 Chi-Square Calculation: 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

 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
16
 Correlation Analysis (Numeric Data)

 Correlation coefficient (also called Pearson’s product moment

coefficient)

i1 (ai  A)(bi  B) 

n n
(ai bi )  n AB
rA, B   i 1

(n  1) A B (n  1) A B

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

A B
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
17
Visually Evaluating Correlation

Scatter plots
showing the
similarity from
–1 to 1.

18
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 '

19
 Covariance (Numeric Data)
 Covariance is similar to correlation

Correlation coefficient:

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

A B the respective standard
expected values of A and B, σA and σB are
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
20
 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
22
 Data Reduction
 Data reduction: It is processing technique which helps in obtaining
reduced representation of the data set (ie set having much smaller
volume of data ) from the available data set 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
 Data cube aggregation

 Attribute subset selection

 Dimensionality reduction, e.g., remove unimportant attributes

 Wavelet transforms

 Principal Components Analysis (PCA)

 Numerosity reduction (some simply call it: Data Reduction)

 Regression and Log-Linear Models

 Histograms, clustering, sampling

 Data Compression
23
 Data Cube Aggregation
 Where aggregation operations are applied to the data in the construction of a
data cube. It is a process in which information is gathered and expressed in a
summary form, for purpose such as statistical analysis. Example
Year 2016
Half-yearly Sales

H1 Rs.5000

H2 Rs.3000

Year 2017 Year Sales

Half-yearly Sales 2016 Rs.8000
H1 Rs.6000
2017 Rs.7000
H2 Rs.1000 2018 Rs.13000

Year 2018
Half-yearly Sales

H1 Rs.8000

H2 Rs.5000

24
 Attribute Subset Selection
 Irrelevant, weakly relevant, or redundant attributes or dimensions may be
detected and removed.
 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

25
 Heuristic Search in Attribute Selection
 For n attributes, there exists 2n possible subsets.
 Typical heuristic attribute selection methods:
 Stepwise forward selection
 Stepwise backward elimination
 Combination of forward selection and backward elimination
 Decision tree induction

26
 Stepwise forward selection

 In the beginning of the procedure, the reduced set is empty.

 Then determines the best attribute among all the available original
attributes and adds it to the reduced set.

Forward Selection
Initial Attribute Set: { A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,A6,A7,A8}
Initial Reduced Set : { }
=> {A2}
=> {A2, A5}
=> {A2,A5,A6}
=> Reduced Attribute Set:
=>{A2,A5,A6,A8}

27
 Stepwise backward elimination

 Initially, the procedure starts with the full set of attributes in the reduced set.
 Then, with each successive iteration the worst attribute is removed from
the attribute set.

Backward Elimination
Initial Attribute Set: { A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,A6,A7,A8}

=> {A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,A6,A8}

=> {A1,A2,A3,A5,A6,A8}

=> {A1,A2,A5,A6,A8}

=> Reduced Attribute Set:

=>{A2,A5,A6,A8}

28
 Combination of forward selection and backward elimination

 This technique with each iteration identifies the best attribute from the original
attributes and at the same time removes the worst attributes from the
remaining attributes.

29
 Decision Tree Induction
 This technique constructs a tree-like structure on the basis of the available data
 The tree consists of an internal (nonleaf) node, which denotes a test on an
attribute, a branch, which represents the result of the test, and an external
(leaf) node which denotes predicated class.
 At each node, the algorithm chooses the best attribute such that the data are
divided into individual classes.
Initial Attribute Set: {A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,A6,A7,A8}

A5?
Y N
A2? A8?
Y N Y N
A6? class1 class1 class2

Y N
class1 class2

Reduced Attribute Set: {A2,A5,A6,A8}

30
 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 (PCA)

31
 Dimensionality Reduction
 Dimensionality reduction represents the original data in the compressed or reduced form
by applying data encoding or transformations on it.
 If the original data can be reconstructed from the compressed data without losing any
information, the data reduction is said to be lossless.
 If one can reconstruct only an approximation of the original data, the data reduction is
said to be lossy.
 The two most effective and popular methods of lossy dimensionality reduction are
 Wavelet transforms
 Principal Component Analysis(PCA)

32
 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

33
 Wavelet Transformation
Haar2 Daubechie4
 This lossy dimension reduction method works by using its variant
called Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)
 DWT is a linear signal processing technique, multi-resolution analysis
 Compressed approximation: store only a small fraction of the
strongest of the wavelet coefficients
 Similar to Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) , it is a signal
processing technique, but better lossy compression, localized in space
 Lossy compression by wavelets gives better result than JPEG
compression.
 Some of the popular wavelet transforms are Haar-2, Daubechines-4
and Daubechines-6 transforms.

34
 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
35
 Principal Component Analysis (Steps)
 This method searches for k,
 n-dimensional orthogonal vectors that can be best used to represent the data
 Where k <= n, here n refers to total attributes or dimensions of the data which need to
be reduced
 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

36
 Numerosity Reduction
 It reduces data volume by choosing alternative smaller forms of data
representation. Such representation can be achieved by two methods
1. Parametric methods
 Here, only parameters of data and outliers are stored instead of the
actual data. (Assume the data fits some model, estimate model
parameters, store only the parameters, and discard the data (except
possible outliers))
 Ex.: Regression and Log-linear models
2. Non-parametric methods
Used to store data in reduced forms such as Histograms, Clustering,
Sampling, …
 Do not assume models

37
 Regression Models

 Linear regression (Y = m X + b)
 Data modeled to fit a straight line, it uses the formula of a straight line (Y =
m X + b) and determines the appropriate values for m and b (called
regression coefficients) to predict the value of y (also called response
variable) based on a given value of x (also called predictor variable)
 Often uses the least-square method to fit the line
 Two regression coefficients, m 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)
 Allows a response variable Y to be modeled as a linear function of
multidimensional feature vector
 Many nonlinear functions can be transformed into the above

38
 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 (including forecasting of
give 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

39
 Log-Linear Models
 Log-linear models:
 Approximate discrete multidimensional probability distributions
 Estimate the probability of each point (tuple) in a multi-dimensional
space for a set of discretized attributes, based on a smaller subset
of dimensional combinations
 Useful for dimensionality reduction and data smoothing

40
 Histogram

 One of the popular forms of data40

reduction and uses binning for
35
approximating the distribution of
data 30
 Divide data into buckets and store 25
average (sum) for each bucket
20
 Partitioning rules:
15
 Equal-width: equal bucket range
10
 Equal-frequency (or equal-
depth) 5
0
30000
10000

20000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

100000
41
 Histogram
 Partitioning rules:
 Equal-width: equal bucket range
 In this, the width of each bucket range is uniform
 Equal-frequency (or equal-depth)
buckets are created that the frequency of each bucket is roughly
constant. Ie each bucket is roughly holding the same number of
contiguous data samples.

42
 Clustering
 Partition data set into clusters based on similarity, and store cluster
representation (e.g., centroid and diameter) only
 The quality of clusters is determined by two factors, namely cluster
diameter and centroid distance
 Cluster diameter is defined as the maximum distance b/w any two
objects.
 Centroid distance is the average distance of each cluster object from the
cluster centroid.
 Can be very effective if data is clustered but not if data is “smeared”
 Can have hierarchical clustering and be stored in multi-dimensional index
tree structures
 There are many choices of clustering definitions and clustering algorithms
 Cluster analysis will be studied in depth in Chapter 10

43
 Sampling
 It is data reduction technique which helps in representing a large data set by
a much smaller random sample (or subset) of the data.
 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:
 Note: Sampling may not reduce database I/Os (page at a time)

44
 Types of Sampling

 Simple random Sample without replacement(SRSWOR) of size s

 Once an object is selected, it is removed from the population

 Simple random Sample with replacement(SRSWR) of size s

 A selected object is not removed from the population

 Stratified sampling(Cluster sample):

 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

45
Sampling: With or without Replacement

W O R
SRS le random
i m p h ou t
( s e wi t
l
samp ment)
pl a c e
re

SRSW
R

Raw Data
46
Sampling: Cluster or Stratified Sampling

Raw Data Cluster/Stratified Sample

47
 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
48
 Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

ss y
lo
Original Data
Approximated

49
If the original data can be reconstructed from the
compressed data without losing any information, the
data reduction is said to be lossless.

If one can reconstruct only an approximation of the

original data, the data reduction is said to be lossy.
 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
51
 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
52
 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  0)  0  0.716
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. Then 16,000
 Normalization by decimal scaling
v
v'  j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(|ν’|) < 1
10
53
 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

54
 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)

55
 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
56
 Binning Methods for Data Smoothing
 Sorted data for price (in dollars): 2,10,18,18,19,20,22,25,28
* Partition into equal-frequency (equi-depth) bins:
- Bin 1: 2,10,18
- Bin 2:18,19,20
- Bin 3: 22,25,28
* Smoothing by bin means:
- Bin 1: 10,10,10
- Bin 2:19,19,19
- Bin 3:25,25,25
* Smoothing by bin medians:
- Bin 1: 10,10,10
- Bin 2:19,19,19
- Bin 3:25,25,25
* Smoothing by bin boundaries:
- Bin 1: 2,2,18
- Bin 2: 18,18,20
- Bin 3: 22,22,28
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Discretization Without Using Class Labels
(Binning vs. Clustering)

Data Equal interval width

(binning)

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

results
58
 Discretization by 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

59
 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.

60
 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

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 Summary
 Data quality: accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness,
believability, interpretability
 Data cleaning: e.g. missing/noisy values, outliers
 Data integration from multiple sources:
 Entity identification problem

 Remove redundancies

 Detect inconsistencies

 Data reduction
 Dimensionality reduction

 Numerosity reduction

 Data compression

 Data transformation and data discretization

 Normalization

 Concept hierarchy generation

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