11.1 Introduction to the Data Survey

11.1 Introduction to the Data Survey

This chapter deals entirely with the data survey, a topic at least as large as data preparation. The introduction to the use, purposes, and methods of data surveying in this chapter discusses how prepared data is used during the survey. Most, if not all, of the surveying techniques can be automated. Indeed, the full suite of programs from which the data preparation demonstration code is drawn is a full data preparation and survey tool set. This chapter touches only on the main topics of data surveying. It is an introduction to the territory itself. The introduction starts with understanding the concept of ?information.?

This book mentions ?information? in several places. ?Information is embedded in a data set.? ?The purpose of data preparation is to best expose information to a mining tool.? ?Information is contained in variability.? Information, information, information. Clearly, ?information? is a key feature of data preparation. In fact, information?its discovery, exposure, and understanding?is what the whole preparation-survey-mining endeavor is about. A data set may represent information in a form that is not easily, or even at all, understandable by humans. When the data set is large, understanding significant and salient points becomes even more difficult. Data mining is devised as a tool to transform the impenetrable information embedded in a data set into understandable relationships or predictions.

However, it is important to keep in mind that mining is not designed to extract information. Data, or the data set, enfolds information. This information...

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Data Preparation for Data Mining

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11.1 Introduction to the Data Survey

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