Data Mining:

Concepts and
Techniques

1
Why preprocess the data?

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 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
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 Multi-Dimensional Measure of Data
Quality

 A well-accepted multidimensional view:

 Accuracy

 Completeness

 Consistency

 Timeliness

 Believability

 Value added

 Interpretability

 Accessibility

 Broad categories:
 intrinsic, contextual, representational, and

accessibility.
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 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 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
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Forms of data
preprocessing

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Data cleaning

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 Data Cleaning

 Data cleaning tasks

 Fill in missing values
 Identify outliers and smooth out noisy
data
 Correct inconsistent data

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 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.

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 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:
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 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 11
 How to Handle Noisy Data?
 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

 detect suspicious values and check by human

 Regression
 smooth by fitting the data into regression

functions 12
 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
 13
 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 (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
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Cluster Analysis

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Regression
y

Y1

Y1’ y=x+1

X1 x

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Data integration and transformation

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 Data Integration
 Data integration:
 combines data from multiple sources into a

coherent store
 Schema integration
 integrate metadata from different sources

 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

 possible reasons: different representations,

different scales, e.g., metric vs. British units

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 Data in Data
Integration
 Redundant data occur often when integration of
multiple 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
correlational analysis
 Careful integration of the data from multiple
sources may help reduce/avoid redundancies and
inconsistencies and improve mining speed and
quality 19
 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 20
 Data Transformation:
Normalization
 min-max normalization
v − minA
v' = (new _ maxA − new _ minA) + new _ minA
maxA − minA
 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

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 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

 Why preprocess the data?

 Data cleaning
 Data integration and transformation
 Data reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy
generation

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 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

 Numerosity reduction

 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

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 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
 24
 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

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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}

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 Heuristic Feature Selection
Methods
 There are 2d possible sub-features of d features
 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:
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 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
 28
Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

s s y
lo
Original Data
Approximated

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 Wavelet Transforms
Haar2 Daubechie4
 Discrete wavelet transform (DWT): 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
 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
 30
 Principal Component Analysis

 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
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Principal Component Analysis

X2

Y1
Y2

X1

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 Numerosity Reduction

 Parametric methods
 Assume the data fits some model, estimate
model 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
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 Regression and Log-Linear
Models

 Linear regression: Data are 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
 Log-linear model: approximates discrete 34
 Regress Analysis and Log-
Linear Models
 Linear regression: Y = α + β X
 Two parameters , α and β 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.

 Log-linear models:
 The multi-way table of joint probabilities is

approximated by a product of lower-order

tables.

Probability: p(a, b, c, d) = αab βacχad δbcd
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 Histograms

 A popular data 40
reduction technique 35
 Divide data into 30
buckets and store
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average (sum) for
each bucket 20
 Can be constructed 15
optimally in one 10
dimension using
5
dynamic
programming 0
 Related to

90000
20000

40000

70000
50000
10000

30000

60000

80000

100000
quantization 36
 Clustering

 Partition data set into clusters, and one can store

cluster representation only
 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, further detailed in
Chapter 8
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 Sampling

 Allow a mining algorithm to run in complexity that

is potentially sub-linear to the size of the data
 Choose a representative subset of the data
 Simple random sampling may have very poor

performance in the presence of skew

 Develop adaptive sampling methods
 Stratified sampling:

 Approximate the percentage of each class (or

subpopulation of interest) in the overall

database
 Used in conjunction with skewed data

 Sampling may not reduce database I/Os (page at a 38

 Sampling

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

SRSW
R

Raw Data
39
Sampling

Raw Data Cluster/Stratified Sample

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 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 41

 Chapter 3: Data Preprocessing

Discretization and concept hierarchy

generation

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 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
 Some classification algorithms only accept

categorical attributes.
 Reduce data size by discretization

 Prepare for further analysis

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 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).

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 Discretization and concept
hierarchy generation for numeric
data

 Binning (see sections before)

 Histogram analysis (see sections before)

 Clustering analysis (see sections before)

 Entropy-based discretization

 Segmentation by natural partitioning

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 Entropy-Based Discretization
 Given a set of samples S, if S is partitioned into
two intervals S1 and S2 using boundary T, the
entropy after partitioning
|S | is | S |
E (S , T ) = 1 Ent ( ) + 2 Ent ( )
|S| S1 | S | S2
 The boundary that minimizes the entropy function
over all possible boundaries is selected as a binary
discretization.
 The process is recursively applied to partitions
obtained until some
Ent ( S stopping
) − E (T , S )criterion
>δ is met, e.g.,

 Experiments show that it may reduce data size

and improve classification accuracy
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 Segmentation by natural
partitioning

3-4-5 rule can be used to segment numeric 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 equi-width intervals
* If it covers 2, 4, or 8 distinct values at the most
significant digit, partition the range into 4
intervals
* If it covers 1, 5, or 10 distinct values at the most 47
 Example of 3-4-5 rule
count

Step 1: -$351 -$159 profit $1,838 $4,700

Min Low (i.e, 5%-tile) High(i.e, 95%-0 tile) Max
Step 2: msd=1,000 Low=-$1,000 High=$2,000

(-$1,000 - $2,000)
Step 3:

(-$1,000 - 0) (0 -$ 1,000) ($1,000 - $2,000)

(-$4000 -$5,000)
Step 4:

($2,000 - $5, 000)

(-$400 - 0) (0 - $1,000) ($1,000 - $2, 000)
(0 -
($1,000 -
(-$400 - $200)
$1,200) ($2,000 -
-$300) $3,000)
($200 -
($1,200 -
$400)
(-$300 - $1,400)
($3,000 -
-$200)
($400 - ($1,400 - $4,000)
(-$200 - $600) $1,600) ($4,000 -
-$100) ($600 - ($1,600 - $5,000)
$800) ($800 - ($1,800 -
$1,800)
(-$100 - $1,000) $2,000)
0)
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 Concept hierarchy generation for
categorical data

 Specification of a partial ordering of attributes

explicitly at the schema level by users or experts
 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

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 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

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