Data Mining:

Concepts and Techniques

Data Understanding
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February 22, 2021 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 2
 Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your Data

 Data Objects and Attribute Types

 Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

 Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

 Summary

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 Types of Data Sets
 Record
 Relational records
 Data matrix, e.g., numerical matrix,

timeout

season
coach

game
score
team

ball

lost
pla
crosstabs

wi
n
y
 Document data: text documents
 Transaction data
Document 1 3 0 5 0 2 6 0 2 0 2
 Graph and network
 World Wide Web Document 2 0 7 0 2 1 0 0 3 0 0

 Social or information networks Document 3 0 1 0 0 1 2 2 0 3 0

 Molecular Structures
 Ordered
 Video data: sequence of images TID Items
 Temporal data: time-series 1 Bread, Coke, Milk
 Sequential Data: transaction sequences 2 Beer, Bread
 Genetic sequence data
3 Beer, Coke, Diaper, Milk
 Spatial, image and multimedia:
4 Beer, Bread, Diaper, Milk
 Spatial data: maps
 Image data 5 Coke, Diaper, Milk
 Video data

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Important Characteristics of Structured Data

 Dimensionality
 Curse of dimensionality
 Sparsity
 Only presence counts
 Resolution
 Patterns depend on the scale
 Distribution
 Centrality and dispersion

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 Data Objects

 Data sets are made up of data objects.

 A data object represents an entity.
 Examples:
 sales database: customers, store items, sales
 medical database: patients, treatments
 university database: students, professors, courses
 Also called samples , examples, instances, data points,
objects, tuples.
 Data objects are described by attributes.
 Database rows -> data objects; columns ->attributes.
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 Attributes

 Attribute (or dimensions, features, variables):

a data field, representing a characteristic or a
feature of a data object.
 E.g., customer _ID, name, address
 Types:
 Nominal

 Binary

 Numeric: quantitative

 Interval-scaled

 Ratio-scaled

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 Attribute Types
 Nominal: categories, states, or “names of things”
 Hair_color = {auburn, black, blond, brown, grey, red, white}
 marital status, occupation, ID numbers, zip codes
 Binary
 Nominal attribute with only 2 states (0 and 1)
 Symmetric binary: both outcomes equally important
 e.g., gender
 Asymmetric binary: outcomes not equally important.
 e.g., medical test (positive vs. negative)
 Convention: assign 1 to most important outcome (e.g., HIV
positive)
 Ordinal
 Values have a meaningful order (ranking) but magnitude between
successive values is not known.
 Size = {small, medium, large}, grades, army rankings

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 Numeric Attribute Types
 Quantity (integer or real-valued)
 Interval
 Measured on a scale of equal-sized units
 Values have order
 E.g., temperature in C˚or F˚, calendar dates
 No true zero-point
 Ratio
 Inherent zero-point
 We can speak of values as being an order of
magnitude larger than the unit of measurement
(10 K˚ is twice as high as 5 K˚).
 e.g., temperature in Kelvin, length, counts,
monetary quantities
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 Discrete vs. Continuous Attributes
 Discrete Attribute
 Has only a finite or countably infinite set of values

 E.g., zip codes, profession, or the set of words in a

collection of documents
 Sometimes, represented as integer variables

 Note: Binary attributes are a special case of discrete

attributes
 Continuous Attribute
 Has real numbers as attribute values

 E.g., temperature, height, or weight

 Practically, real values can only be measured and

represented using a finite number of digits
 Continuous attributes are typically represented as
floating-point variables
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 Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your Data

 Data Objects and Attribute Types

 Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

 Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

 Summary

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 Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data
 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
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 Measuring the Central Tendency
 Mean (algebraic measure) (sample vs. population): 1 n
x   xi   x
Note: n is sample size and N is population size. n i 1 N
n
Weighted arithmetic mean:
w x

i i
 Trimmed mean: chopping extreme values x i 1
n
 Median: w
i 1
i

 Middle value if odd number of values, or average of

the middle two values otherwise
 Estimated by interpolation (for grouped data):
n / 2  ( freq)l
median  L1  ( ) width
 Mode freqmedian
 Value that occurs most frequently in the data
 Unimodal, bimodal, trimodal
 Empirical formula: mean  mode  3  (mean  median)
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Symmetric vs. Skewed Data
 Median, mean and mode of symmetric
symmetric, positively and
negatively skewed data

positively skewed negatively skewed

February 22, 2021 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 14

 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, median, Q3, max
 Boxplot: ends of the box are the quartiles; median is marked; add
whiskers, and plot outliers individually
 Outlier: usually, a value higher/lower than 1.5 x IQR
 Variance and standard deviation (sample: s, population: σ)
 Variance: (algebraic, scalable computation)
1 n 1 n 2 1 n 2
 [ xi  ( xi ) ]
n n
1 1
s  ( xi  x )         xi   2
2 2 2 2 2
( x )
n  1 i 1 n  1 i 1 n i 1 N i 1
i
N i 1

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

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 Data Measures: Three Categories

 Distributive: if the result derived by applying the function

to n aggregate values is the same as that derived by
applying the function on all the data without partitioning
 E.g., count(), sum(), min(), max()
 Algebraic: if it can be computed by an algebraic function
with M arguments (where M is a bounded integer), each of
which is obtained by applying a distributive aggregate
function
 E.g., avg(), min_N(), standard_deviation()
 Holistic: if there is no constant bound on the storage size
needed to describe a subaggregate.
 E.g., median(), mode(), rank()
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 Boxplot Analysis

 Five-number summary of a distribution

 Minimum, Q1, Median, 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 IQR
 The median is marked by a line within the
box
 Whiskers: two lines outside the box extended
to Minimum and Maximum
 Outliers: points beyond a specified outlier
threshold, plotted individually

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 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

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Graphic Displays of Basic Statistical Descriptions

 Boxplot: graphic display of five-number

summary
 Histogram: x-axis are values, y-axis repres.
frequencies
 Scatter plot: each pair of values is a pair of
coordinates and plotted as points in the plane

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 Histogram Analysis
 Histogram: Graph display of
tabulated frequencies, shown as 40
bars 35
 It shows what proportion of cases 30
fall into each of several categories
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 Differs from a bar chart in that it is
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the area of the bar that denotes the
value, not the height as in bar 15
charts, a crucial distinction when the 10
categories are not of uniform width
5
 The categories are usually specified
0
as non-overlapping intervals of 10000 30000 50000 70000 90000
some variable. The categories (bars)
must be adjacent

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Histograms Often Tell More than Boxplots

 The two histograms

shown in the left may
have the same boxplot
representation
 The same values
for: min, Q1,
median, Q3, max
 But they have rather
different data
distributions

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 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

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Positively and Negatively Correlated Data

 The left half fragment is positively

correlated
 The right half is negative correlated

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Uncorrelated Data

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 Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your Data

 Data Objects and Attribute Types

 Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

 Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

 Summary

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 Similarity and Dissimilarity
 Similarity
 Numerical measure of how alike two data objects are

 Value is higher when objects are more alike

 Often falls in the range [0,1]

 Dissimilarity (e.g., distance)

 Numerical measure of how different two data objects

are
 Lower when objects are more alike

 Minimum dissimilarity is often 0

 Upper limit varies

 Proximity refers to a similarity or dissimilarity

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 Data Matrix and Dissimilarity Matrix
 Data matrix
 n data points with p  x11 ... x1f ... x1p 
 
dimensions  ... ... ... ... ... 
x xip 
 Two modes
... xif ...
 i1 
 ... ... ... ... ... 
x ... xnf ... xnp 
 n1 
 Dissimilarity matrix
 0 
 n data points, but
 d(2,1) 0 
registers only the  
 d(3,1) d ( 3,2) 0 
distance  
 A triangular matrix  : : : 
d ( n,1) d ( n,2) ... ... 0
 Single mode

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 Proximity Measure for Nominal Attributes

 Can take 2 or more states, e.g., red, yellow, blue,

green (generalization of a binary attribute)
 Method 1: Simple matching
 m: # of matches, p: total # of variables
d (i, j)  p 
p
m

 Method 2: Use a large number of binary attributes

 creating a new binary attribute for each of the
M nominal states

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 Proximity Measure for Binary Attributes
Object j
 A contingency table for binary data
Object i

 Distance measure for symmetric

binary variables:
 Distance measure for asymmetric
binary variables:
 Jaccard coefficient (similarity
measure for asymmetric binary
variables):
 Note: Jaccard coefficient is the same as “coherence”:

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 Dissimilarity between Binary Variables
 Example
Name Gender Fever Cough Test-1 Test-2 Test-3 Test-4
Jack M Y N P N N N
Mary F Y N P N P N
Jim M Y P N N N N

 Gender is a symmetric attribute

 The remaining attributes are asymmetric binary
 Let the values Y and P be 1, and the value N 0
01
d ( jack , mary )   0.33
2 01
11
d ( jack , jim )   0.67
111
1 2
d ( jim, mary )   0.75
11 2
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 Standardizing Numeric Data
x  
 Z-score: z  
 X: raw score to be standardized, μ: mean of the
population, σ: standard deviation
 the distance between the raw score and the population
mean in units of the standard deviation
 negative when the raw score is below the mean, “+”
when above

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 Example:
Data Matrix and Dissimilarity Matrix
Data Matrix
point attribute1 attribute2
x1 1 2
x2 3 5
x3 2 0
x4 4 5

Dissimilarity Matrix
(with Euclidean Distance)

x1 x2 x3 x4
x1 0
x2 3.61 0
x3 2.24 5.1 0
x4 4.24 1 5.39 0

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Distance on Numeric Data: Minkowski Distance
 Minkowski distance: A popular distance measure

where i = (xi1, xi2, …, xip) and j = (xj1, xj2, …, xjp) are two
p-dimensional data objects, and h is the order (the
distance so defined is also called L-h norm)
 Properties
 d(i, j) > 0 if i ≠ j, and d(i, i) = 0 (Positive definiteness)
 d(i, j) = d(j, i) (Symmetry)
 d(i, j)  d(i, k) + d(k, j) (Triangle Inequality)
 A distance that satisfies these properties is a metric
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 Special Cases of Minkowski Distance
 h = 1: Manhattan (city block, L1 norm) distance
 E.g., the Hamming distance: the number of bits that are

different between two binary vectors

d (i, j) | x  x |  | x  x | ... | x  x |
i1 j1 i2 j 2 ip jp

 h = 2: (L2 norm) Euclidean distance

d (i, j)  (| x  x |2  | x  x |2 ... | x  x |2 )
i1 j1 i2 j 2 ip jp

 h  . “supremum” (Lmax norm, L norm) distance.

 This is the maximum difference between any component

(attribute) of the vectors

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 Example: Minkowski Distance
Dissimilarity Matrices
point attribute 1 attribute 2 Manhattan (L1)
x1 1 2
L x1 x2 x3 x4
x2 3 5 x1 0
x3 2 0 x2 5 0
x4 4 5 x3 3 6 0
x4 6 1 7 0
Euclidean (L2)
L2 x1 x2 x3 x4
x1 0
x2 3.61 0
x3 2.24 5.1 0
x4 4.24 1 5.39 0

Supremum
L x1 x2 x3 x4
x1 0
x2 3 0
x3 2 5 0
x4 3 1 5 0
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 Ordinal Variables

 An ordinal variable can be discrete or continuous

 Order is important, e.g., rank
 Can be treated like interval-scaled
 replace xif by their rank rif {1,..., M f }
 map the range of each variable onto [0, 1] by replacing
i-th object in the f-th variable by
rif 1
zif 
M f 1
 compute the dissimilarity using methods for interval-
scaled variables

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 Attributes of Mixed Type

 A database may contain all attribute types

 Nominal, symmetric binary, asymmetric binary, numeric,
ordinal
 One may use a weighted formula to combine their effects
 pf  1 ij( f ) dij( f )
d (i, j) 
 pf  1 ij( f )
 f is binary or nominal:
dij(f) = 0 if xif = xjf , or dij(f) = 1 otherwise
 f is numeric: use the normalized distance
 f is ordinal
 Compute ranks rif and r 1
zif  if

 Treat zif as interval-scaled M 1 f

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 Cosine Similarity
 A document can be represented by thousands of attributes, each
recording the frequency of a particular word (such as keywords) or
phrase in the document.

 Other vector objects: gene features in micro-arrays, …

 Applications: information retrieval, biologic taxonomy, gene feature
mapping, ...
 Cosine measure: If d1 and d2 are two vectors (e.g., term-frequency
vectors), then
cos(d1, d2) = (d1  d2) /||d1|| ||d2|| ,
where  indicates vector dot product, ||d||: the length of vector d

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 Example: Cosine Similarity
 cos(d1, d2) = (d1  d2) /||d1|| ||d2|| ,
where  indicates vector dot product, ||d|: the length of vector d

 Ex: Find the similarity between documents 1 and 2.

d1 = (5, 0, 3, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0)
d2 = (3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1)

d1d2 = 5*3+0*0+3*2+0*0+2*1+0*1+0*1+2*1+0*0+0*1 = 25
||d1||= (5*5+0*0+3*3+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0)0.5=(42)0.5
= 6.481
||d2||= (3*3+0*0+2*2+0*0+1*1+1*1+0*0+1*1+0*0+1*1)0.5=(17)0.5
= 4.12
cos(d1, d2 ) = 0.94

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 Chapter 2: Getting to Know Your Data

 Data Objects and Attribute Types

 Basic Statistical Descriptions of Data

 Measuring Data Similarity and Dissimilarity

 Summary

40
 Summary
 Data attribute types: nominal, binary, ordinal, interval-scaled, ratio-
scaled
 Many types of data sets, e.g., numerical, text, graph, Web, image.
 Gain insight into the data by:
 Basic statistical data description: central tendency, dispersion,
graphical displays
 Data visualization: map data onto graphical primitives
 Measure data similarity
 Above steps are the beginning of data preprocessing.
 Many methods have been developed but still an active area of research.
 References
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 T. Dasu and T. Johnson. Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning. John
Wiley, 2003
 U. Fayyad, G. Grinstein, and A. Wierse. Information Visualization in Data Mining
and Knowledge Discovery, Morgan Kaufmann, 2001
 L. Kaufman and P. J. Rousseeuw. Finding Groups in Data: an Introduction to
Cluster Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, 1990.
 H. V. Jagadish et al., Special Issue on Data Reduction Techniques. Bulletin of
the Tech. Committee on Data Eng., 20(4), Dec. 1997
 D. A. Keim. Information visualization and visual data mining, IEEE trans. on
Visualization and Computer Graphics, 8(1), 2002
 D. Pyle. Data Preparation for Data Mining. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999
 S. Santini and R. Jain,” Similarity measures”, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis
and Machine Intelligence, 21(9), 1999
 E. R. Tufte. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd ed., Graphics
Press, 2001
 C. Yu et al., Visual data mining of multimedia data for social and behavioral
studies, Information Visualization, 8(1), 2009
February 22, 2021 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 43