Data Mining &

Preprocessing
 Data Preprocessing
Why preprocess the data?

Descriptive data summarization

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary
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=“ ”
◦ noisy: containing errors or outliers
◦ e.g., Salary=“-10”
◦ 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
Why Is Data Dirty?
Incomplete data may come from
◦ “Not applicable” data value when collected
◦ Different considerations between the time when the data was collected and when it is
analyzed.
◦ Human/hardware/software problems

Noisy data (incorrect values) may come from

◦ Faulty data collection instruments
◦ Human or computer error at data entry
◦ Errors in data transmission

Inconsistent data may come from

◦ Different data sources
◦ Functional dependency violation (e.g., modify some linked data)

Duplicate records also need data cleaning

 Why Is Data Preprocessing
Important?
No quality data, no quality mining results!
◦ Quality decisions must be based on quality data
◦ e.g., duplicate or missing data may cause incorrect or even misleading statistics.

◦ Data warehouse needs consistent integration of quality data

Data extraction, cleaning, and transformation comprises the majority of the

work of building a data warehouse
 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
 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
Forms of Data Preprocessing
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Descriptive data summarization

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary
 Mining Data Descriptive
Characteristics

Motivation
◦ To better understand the data: central tendency, variation and spread

Data dispersion characteristics

◦ median, max, min, quantiles, outliers, variance, etc.

Numerical dimensions correspond to sorted intervals

◦ Data dispersion: analyzed with multiple granularities of precision
◦ Boxplot or quantile analysis on sorted intervals

Dispersion analysis on computed measures

◦ Folding measures into numerical dimensions
◦ Boxplot or quantile analysis on the transformed cube

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 10

 Measuring the Central Tendency

 
1 n x
Mean (algebraic measure) (sample vs. population): x   xi
n i 1 N
n
◦ Weighted arithmetic mean:
w x i i

◦ Trimmed mean: chopping extreme values x i 1

n

w
i 1
i

Median: A holistic measure

◦ Middle value if odd number of values, or average of the middle two values otherwise
◦ Estimated by interpolation (for grouped data):

Mode
n / 2  ( f )l
median L1  ( )c
◦ Value that occurs most frequently in the data f median
◦ Unimodal, bimodal, trimodal
◦ Empirical formula:
mean  mode 3 (mean  median)
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 11
 Symmetric vs. Skewed
Data
Median, mean and mode of symmetric, positively
and negatively skewed data

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 12

 Measuring the Dispersion of Data
Quartiles, outliers and boxplots
◦ Quartiles: Q1 (25th percentile), Q3 (75th percentile)
◦ Inter-quartile range: IQR = Q3 – Q1
◦ Five number summary: min, Q1, M, Q3, max
◦ Boxplot: ends of the box are the quartiles, median is marked, whiskers, and plot outlier
individually
◦ Outlier: usually, a value higher/lower than 1.5 x IQR

Variance and standard deviation (sample: s, population: σ) 1 n

1 n

 (x   ) x
2
2  i
2
 i  2
N i 1 N i 1
◦ Variance:
n (algebraic, scalable
n computation)
n
1 1 1
  
2
s2  ( xi  x ) 2
 [ xi  ( xi ]
) 2

n  1 i 1 n  1 i 1 n i 1

◦ Standard deviation s (or σ) is the square root of variance s2 (or σ2)

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 13
 Properties of Normal Distribution Curve
The normal (distribution) curve
◦ From μ–σ to μ+σ: contains about 68% of the measurements (μ: mean, σ: standard
deviation)
◦ From μ–2σ to μ+2σ: contains about 95% of it
◦ From μ–3σ to μ+3σ: contains about 99.7% of it

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 14

 Boxplot Analysis
Five-number summary of a distribution:
Minimum, Q1, M, Q3, Maximum

Boxplot
◦ Data is represented with a box
◦ The ends of the box are at the first and third quartiles, i.e., the height of the
box is IRQ
◦ The median is marked by a line within the box
◦ Whiskers: two lines outside the box extend to Minimum and Maximum

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 15

 Visualization of Data Dispersion: Boxplot Analysis

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 16

 Histogram Analysis
Graph displays of basic statistical class descriptions
◦ Frequency histograms
◦ A univariate graphical method
◦ Consists of a set of rectangles that reflect the counts or frequencies of the classes present in the given
data

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 17

Quantile Plot
Displays all of the data (allowing the user to assess both the overall behavior and
unusual occurrences)
Plots quantile information
◦ For a data xi data sorted in increasing order, fi indicates that approximately 100 fi% of the
data are below or equal to the value xi

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 18

Quantile-Quantile (Q-Q) Plot
Graphs the quantiles of one univariate distribution against the corresponding
quantiles of another
Allows the user to view whether there is a shift in going from one distribution to
another

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 19

 Scatter plot
Provides a first look at bivariate data to see clusters of points, outliers, etc
Each pair of values is treated as a pair of coordinates and plotted as points in
the plane

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 20

 Loess Curve
Adds a smooth curve to a scatter plot in order to provide better perception of
the pattern of dependence
Loess curve is fitted by setting two parameters: a smoothing parameter, and
the degree of the polynomials that are fitted by the regression

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 21

 Positively and Negatively Correlated Data

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 22

 Not Correlated Data

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 23

 Graphic Displays of Basic Statistical
Descriptions

Histogram: (shown before)

Boxplot: (covered before)
Quantile plot: each value xi is paired with fi indicating that approximately 100 fi % of data are 
xi
Quantile-quantile (q-q) plot: graphs the quantiles of one univariant distribution against the
corresponding quantiles of another
Scatter plot: each pair of values is a pair of coordinates and plotted as points in the plane
Loess (local regression) curve: add a smooth curve to a scatter plot to provide better perception
of the pattern of dependence

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 24

 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Descriptive data summarization

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 25

 Data Cleaning
Importance
◦ “Data cleaning is one of the three biggest problems in data warehousing”—
Ralph Kimball
◦ “Data cleaning is the number one problem in data warehousing”—DCI survey

Data cleaning tasks

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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 26

 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.

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 27

 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?

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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 28

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 29

 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)

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 30

 Simple Discretization Methods: 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 31

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
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 32
 Regression
y

Y1

Y1’ y=x+1

X1 x

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 33

 Cluster Analysis

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 34

 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)

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 35

 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 36

 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

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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 37

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 38

 Correlation Analysis (Numerical Data)

Correlation coefficient (also called Pearson’s product moment coefficient)

rA, B 
 (A  A)( B  B )

 ( AB)  n A B
(n  1)AB (n  1)AB
where n is the number of tuples, and are the respective means of A and B, σA and σB
are the respective standard deviation of A and
A B, and BΣ(AB) 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; rA,B < 0: negatively correlated

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 39

 Correlation Analysis (Categorical Data)

Χ2 (chi-square) test
2
(Observed  Expected )
 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 40

 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)

2 2 2 2
( 250  90) (50  210) ( 200  360) (1000  840)
2     507.93
90 210 360 840
It shows that like_science_fiction and play_chess are correlated in the group

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 41

 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 ones

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 42

 Data Transformation: 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, 1.0]. Then $73,000 is
73,600  12,000
mapped to (1.0  0)  0 0.716
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
v decimal scaling
v'  Where j is the smallest integer such that Max(|ν’|) < 1
10 j
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 43
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 44

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 45

 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

Reference appropriate levels

◦ Use the smallest representation which is enough to solve the task

Queries regarding aggregated information should be answered using data cube,

when possible

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 46

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 47

 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}

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 48

 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
◦ Optimal branch and bound:
◦ Use feature elimination and backtracking

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 49

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 50

 Data Compression

Original Data Compressed

Data
lossless

sy
los
Original Data
Approximated

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 51

 Dimensionality Reduction:
Wavelet Transformation
Haar2 Daubechie4
Discrete wavelet transform (DWT): linear signal processing, multi-resolutional
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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 52

 DWT for Image Compression
Image

Low Pass High Pass

Low Pass High Pass

Low Pass High Pass

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 53

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 54

 Principal Component Analysis

X2

Y1

Y2

X1

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 55

 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 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 56

 Data Reduction Method (1):
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 multidimensional probability

distributions

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 57

Regress Analysis and Log-Linear Models

Linear regression: Y = w X + b
◦ Two regression coefficients, w 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.

◦ 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) = ab acad bcd
 Data Reduction Method (2):
Histograms

40
Divide data into buckets and store average
(sum) for each bucket
35
Partitioning rules:
30
◦ Equal-width: equal bucket range
◦ Equal-frequency (or equal-depth) 25
◦ V-optimal: with the least histogram variance
20
(weighted sum of the original values that
each bucket represents) 15
◦ MaxDiff: set bucket boundary between each 10
pair for pairs have the β–1 largest differences
5
0
10000 30000 50000 70000 90000
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 59
 Data Reduction Method (3): Clustering

Partition data set into clusters based on similarity, and store cluster
representation (e.g., centroid and diameter) 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

Cluster analysis will be studied in depth in Chapter 7

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 60

 Data Reduction Method (4):
Sampling
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
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

Note: Sampling may not reduce database I/Os (page at a time)

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 61

 Sampling: with or without Replacement

S W OR om
SR le rand
p t
(sim le withou
samp ment)
ce
r e pl a

SRSW
R

Raw Data
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 62
 Sampling: Cluster or Stratified Sampling

Raw Data Cluster/Stratified Sample

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 63

 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 64

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

◦ Continuous — real numbers, e.g., integer or 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 65

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)

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 66

 Discretization and Concept Hierarchy
Generation for Numeric Data
Typical methods: All the methods can be applied recursively
◦ Binning (covered above)
◦ Top-down split, unsupervised,

◦ Histogram analysis (covered above)

◦ Top-down split, unsupervised

◦ Clustering analysis (covered above)

◦ Either top-down split or bottom-up merge, unsupervised

◦ Entropy-based discretization: supervised, top-down split

◦ Interval merging by 2 Analysis: unsupervised, bottom-up merge

◦ Segmentation by natural partitioning: top-down split, unsupervised

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 67

Entropy-Based Discretization
Given a set of samples S, if S is partitioned into two intervals S and S using boundary
1 2

T, the information gain after partitioning is

|S | |S |
I ( S , T )  1 Entropy ( S 1)  2 Entropy ( S 2)
|S| |S|
Entropy is calculated based on class distribution of the samples in the set. Given m
classes, the entropy of S1 is m
Entropy ( S1 )   pi log 2 ( pi )
i 1

where pi is the probability of class i in S1

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 stopping criterion
is met

Such a boundary may reduce

February 8, 2025 DATA data size
MINING: and improve
CONCEPTS classification accuracy
AND TECHNIQUES 68
Interval Merge by  2
Analysis
Merging-based (bottom-up) vs. splitting-based methods

Merge: Find the best neighboring intervals and merge them to form larger intervals
recursively

ChiMerge [Kerber AAAI 1992, See also Liu et al. DMKD 2002]
◦ Initially, each distinct value of a numerical attr. A is considered to be one interval
◦ 2 tests are performed for every pair of adjacent intervals
◦ Adjacent intervals with the least 2 values are merged together, since low 2 values for a
pair indicate similar class distributions
◦ This merge process proceeds recursively until a predefined stopping criterion is met (such
as significance level, max-interval, max inconsistency, etc.)

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 69

 Segmentation by Natural Partitioning

A simply 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 significant digit, partition the
range into 5 intervals

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 70

 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)

(-$400 -$5,000)
Step 4:

(-$400 - 0) ($2,000 - $5, 000)

(0 - $1,000) ($1,000 - $2, 000)
(0 -
(-$400 - ($1,000 -
$200)
$1,200) ($2,000 -
-$300)
($200 - $3,000)
($1,200 -
(-$300 - $400)
$1,400)
-$200) ($3,000 -
($400 - ($1,400 - $4,000)
(-$200 - $600) $1,600) ($4,000 -
-$100) $5,000)
($600 - ($1,600 -
$800) ($800 - ($1,800 -
$1,800)
(-$100 - $1,000) $2,000)
0)
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 71
 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

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}

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 72

 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

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 73
 Chapter 2: Data Preprocessing

Why preprocess the data?

Data cleaning

Data integration and transformation

Data reduction

Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

Summary

February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 74

 Summary
Data preparation or preprocessing is a big issue for both data warehousing and
data mining

Discriptive data summarization is need for quality data preprocessing

Data preparation includes

◦ Data cleaning and data integration
◦ Data reduction and feature selection
◦ Discretization

A lot a methods have been developed but data preprocessing still an active area
of research
References
D. P. Ballou and G. K. Tayi. Enhancing data quality in data warehouse environments. Communications of ACM, 42:73-78, 1999

T. Dasu and T. Johnson. Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning. John Wiley & Sons, 2003

T. Dasu, T. Johnson, S. Muthukrishnan, V. Shkapenyuk. Mining Database Structure; Or, How to Build a Data Quality Browser .
SIGMOD’02.

H.V. Jagadish et al., Special Issue on Data Reduction Techniques. Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Data Engineering,
20(4), December 1997

D. Pyle. Data Preparation for Data Mining. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999

E. Rahm and H. H. Do. Data Cleaning: Problems and Current Approaches. IEEE Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Data
Engineering. Vol.23, No.4

V. Raman and J. Hellerstein. Potters Wheel: An Interactive Framework for Data Cleaning and Transformation, VLDB’2001

T. Redman. Data Quality: Management and Technology. Bantam Books, 1992

Y. Wand and R. Wang. Anchoring data quality dimensions ontological foundations. Communications of ACM, 39:86-95, 1996

R. Wang, V. Storey, and C. Firth. A framework for analysis of data quality research. IEEE Trans. Knowledge and Data
Engineering, 7:623-640, 1995
February 8, 2025 DATA MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES 77