What is Data Preprocessing?
Data preprocessing refers to the procedures involved in transforming or encoding data so that a computer may easily interpret it. The algorithm must be able to quickly comprehend the data’s attributes for a model to be accurate and exact in predictions.
Due to their various origins, the bulk of real-world datasets are particularly prone to missing, inconsistent, and noisy data. Data mining tools would produce bad outcomes since they would not be capable to find patterns in this noisy data. As a consequence, data processing is essential for enhancing data quality overall.
- Due to duplicate or missing numbers, the overall statistics of data may be misrepresented.
- Outliers might disturb the model’s learning abilities, resulting in inaccurate predictions.
Data cleaning
This is the first step in the data preparation process that involves filling in smoothing noisy data, resolving inconsistencies, missing values, and eliminating outliers.
Noisy data – In a measured variable, it entails eliminating a random error or variation. The following strategies can be used to accomplish this:
- Binning – It’s a smoothing technique that works on sorted data values to remove any noise. Each bin/bucket is handled individually once the data is separated into equal-sized bins. A segment’s mean, median, or border values can be used to replace all of the data in it.
- Regression – Prediction is a common application of this data mining technology. By fitting all the data points in a regression function, it aids in the smoothing of noise. If there is just one independent attribute, the linear regression equation is utilized.
- Clustering – Grouping, and clustering of data with comparable values. The values that do not belong in the cluster can be discarded as noisy data.
Missing values – When it comes to missing values here are a few options for dealing with this problem:
- Those tuples should be ignored – When a dataset is large and a tuple has many missing values, this technique should be considered
- Fill in the blanks with the missing values- There are a variety of ways to
accomplish this, including manually filling in the data, utilizing regression to anticipate missing values, or using numerical approaches like attribute mean.
Data integration
It’s extremely important when trying to tackle a real-world problem. The only way to create a larger database is to combine photos from numerous medical nodes.
While using Data Integration as one of the Data Preprocessing processes, we may encounter the various challenges:
- Object matching and schema integration: Data might be in a variety of forms and properties, which can make data integration problematic.
- Conflicts in data values are detected and resolved.
- Duplicate characteristics are being removed from all data sources.
Data transformation
After the data has been cleared, we must combine the quality data into other forms by modifying the format and structure of the data.
Normalization is the most extensively used Data Transformation method. To fit inside a certain range, the numerical properties are scaled up or down. To create a correlation between distinct data points, we confine our data attribute to a certain container in this manner. Normalization can be accomplished in a variety of methods.
Data reduction
The dataset in a data warehouse may be too huge for data analysis and data mining techniques to manage.
One option is to create a simplified representation of the dataset that is substantially less in size but delivers comparable analytical findings.
- Feature extraction is carried out using dimensionality reduction methods. The properties or individual aspects of the data are referred to as the dataset’s dimensionality. This method seeks to limit the number of redundant characteristics that machine learning algorithms take into account.
- The amount of the data may be greatly reduced by applying encoding technologies. However, data compression might be lossy or non-lossy. Lossless reduction is used when original data may be recovered after compressed data has been reconstructed; otherwise, a lossy reduction is used.
Key takeaways
Understanding your data is the first step in Data Preprocessing. Simply glancing at your data might give you a sense of what you should be concentrating on.
Use statistical methods or pre-built libraries to display the dataset and get a clear picture of how your data is distributed in terms of classes.
Make a summary of your data by counting the number of duplicates, missing values, and outliers. Remove any fields that you don’t think would be useful in the modeling or that are closely connected to other qualities. One of the most significant parts of Data Preprocessing is Dimensionality Reduction.
