Database Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 7
Exploring Data
Now that we have obtained and scrubbed our data, we can continue with the third
step of the OSEMN model, which is to explore it. After all that hard work (unless you
already had clean data lying around!), it's time for some fun.
Exploring is the step where you familiarize yourself with the data. Being familiar with
the data is essential when you want to extract any value from it. For example, know‐
ing what kind of features the data has, means you know which ones are worth further
exploring and which ones you can use to answer any questions that you have.
Exploring your data can be done from three perspectives. The first perspective is to
inspect the data and its properties. Here, we want to know, for example, what the raw
data looks like, how many data points the data set has, and what kind of features the
data set has.
The second perspective from which we can explore out data is to compute descriptive
statistics. This perspective is useful for learning more about the individual features.
One advantage of this perspective is that the output is often brief and textual and can
therefore be printed on the command line.
The third perspective is to create visualizations of the data. From this perspective, we
can gain insight into how multiple features interact. We'll discuss a way of creating
visualizations that can be printed on the command line. However, most visualizations
are best displayed on graphical user interfaces. An advantage of visualizations over
descriptive statistics is that visualizations are more flexible and can convey much
more information.
