Data Mining:

Concepts and Techniques

(3rd ed.)

— Chapter 3 —
Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber, and Jian Pei
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign &
Simon Fraser University
©2011 Han, Kamber & Pei. All rights reserved.
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 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
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 Data Quality: Why Preprocess the Data?

 Measures for data quality:

 Accuracy: correct or wrong, accurate or not
 Completeness: not recorded, unavailable
 Consistency: some modified but some not
 Timeliness: timely update?
 Believability: how trustable the data are correct?
 Interpretability: how easily the data can be
understood?

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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, or files
 Data reduction
 Dimensionality reduction
 Numerosity reduction
 Data compression
 Data transformation and data discretization
 Normalization
 Aggregation

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 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
5
 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”
 Intentional (e.g., disguised missing data)
 Jan. 1 as everyone’s birthday?

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 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
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 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
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 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

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 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)

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Binning Methods for Data Smoothing

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

 Check field overloading

 Check uniqueness rule, consecutive rule and null rule

 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
 Integration of the two processes
 Iterative and interactive (e.g., Potter’s Wheels)

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Exercise

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 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
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 Data Integration
 Data integration:
 Combines data from multiple sources into a coherent store
 Entity identification problem:
 Identify real world entities from multiple data sources, e.g., Bill
Clinton = William Clinton, Cust-id = Cust-#
 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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 Handling Redundancy in Data Integration

 Redundant data occur often when integrating multiple

databases
 The same attribute or object may have different
names in different databases
 One attribute may be a “derived” attribute in another
table, e.g., age
 Redundant attributes may 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
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 Correlation Analysis (Nominal Data)
 Χ2 (chi-square) test

(Observed  Expected) 2
 
2

Expected
 Expected = (count(A=ai)*count(B=bj))/n
 The Χ2 statistic tests the hypothesis that A and B are independent, i.e.., there
is no correlation between them
 The test is based on significance level with (r-1)(c-1) degrees of freedom
 If the hypothesis can be rejected, then we say that A and B are statistically
correlated
 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

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 Chi-Square Calculation: An Example

male female Sum (row)

fiction 250(90) 200(360) 450

non-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

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 Chi-Square Calculation: An Example

male female Sum (row)

fiction 250(90) 200(360) 450

non-fiction 50(210) 1000(840) 1050

Sum(col.) 300 1200 1500

 For this 2*2 table, the degrees of freedom are (2-1)(2-1)=1. For 1 degree of
freedom, the Χ2 value needed to reject the hypothesis at 0.001 significance
level is 10.828 (using Χ2 distribution table)
 Since the computed value is above this, we can reject the hypothesis that
gender and preferred reading are independent
 We can conclude that the two attributes are strongly correlated for the given
group of people

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 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, A and B are the respective

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 value, the stronger the correlation.
 rA,B = 0: independent; rAB < 0: negatively correlated

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Visually Evaluating Correlation

Scatter plots
showing the
similarity from
–1 to 1.

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 Covariance (Numeric Data)
 Covariance is similar to correlation

Correlation coefficient:

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

expected values of A and B, σA and σB are the respective standard
deviation of A and B.
 Positive covariance: If CovA,B > 0, then if A is larger than its expected
value, B is also likely to be larger than its expected value.
 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 independence22
 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.

Exercise

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 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
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 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)

 Attribute subset selection, attribute creation

 Numerosity reduction
 Regression and Log-Linear Models
 Histograms, clustering, sampling
 Data cube aggregation

 Data compression
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 Attribute Subset Selection
Reduces the data size by removing:
 Redundant attributes
 Duplicate 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

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Attribute Subset Selection

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Attribute Creation (Feature Generation)
 Create new attributes (features) that can capture the
important information in a data set more effectively than
the original ones

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Data Reduction 2: Numerosity Reduction
 Reduce data volume by choosing alternative, smaller
forms of data representation

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 Histogram Analysis
 Divide data into buckets 40
Partitioning rules: 35
 Equal-width: equal bucket 30
range
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 Equal-frequency (or equal- 20
depth)
15
10
5
0

100000
10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000
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 Clustering
 Partition data set into clusters based on similarity, and
store cluster representation (e.g., centroid and diameter)
only
 Can have hierarchical clustering and be stored in multi-
dimensional index tree structures

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 Sampling

 Sampling: obtaining a small sample s to represent the

whole data set N
 Key principle: Choose a representative subset of the data
 Common ways of sampling:
 Simple random sample without replacement of size
(SRSWOR)
 Simple random sample with replacement of size
(SRSWR)
 Cluster sample
 Stratified sample

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 Types of Sampling

 Simple random sampling

 There is an equal probability of selecting any particular
item
 Sampling without replacement
 Once an object is selected, it is removed from the
population
 Sampling with replacement
 A selected object is not removed from the population

 Stratified sampling:
 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

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Sampling: With or without Replacement

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 Data Cube Aggregation

 Present a summary of the data.

 Example, instead of quarterly sales data, you may be
more interested in annual sales data
 So, the data can be aggregated
 The resulting data set is smaller in volume

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 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

 Dimensionality and numerosity reduction may also be
considered as forms of data compression

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 Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

Original Data
Approximated

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 Exercise

Using the data for age below

13 15 16 16 19 20 20 21 22 22 25 25 25 25 30 33 33 35 35
35 35 36 40 45 46 52 70

Plot an equal width histogram of width 10.

Sketch examples of each of the following sampling

techniques: SRSWOR, SRSWR, cluster sampling and stratified
sampling. Use samples of size 5 and the strata “youth”,
“middle-aged” and “senior”.

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 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
40
 Data Transformation
 Mapping the entire set of values of a given attribute to a new set of replacement
values so that 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: raw values of numeric attributes (e.g., age) replaced by interval
labels (e.g., 0-10, 11-20, etc.) or conceptual labels (e.g., youth, adult, senior)

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 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]. Then $73,600 is mapped to 98,000  12,000 (1.0  0)  0  0.716
 Z-score normalization (μ: mean, σ: standard deviation):
v  A
v' 
 A

73,600  54,000
 Ex. Let μ = 54,000, σ = 16,000. Then  1.225
16,000
 Normalization by decimal scaling
v
v'  j Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(|ν’|) < 1
10
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 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)

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 Concept Hierarchy Generation

 Concept hierarchy organizes concepts (i.e., attribute values)

hierarchically
 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.

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 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

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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, year

country 15 distinct values

province_or_ state 365 distinct values

city 3567 distinct values

street 674,339 distinct values

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 Exercise

 What are the value ranges of the following

normalization methods?
 min-max normalization

 z-score normalization

 normalization by decimal scaling

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 Exercise

 For the following group of data: 200, 300, 400,

600, 1000, use the following methods to
normalize the values.
 min-max normalization

 z-score normalization

 normalization by decimal scaling

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 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
49
 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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