Bad Data Handbook


What is bad data? Some people consider it a technical phenomenon, like missing values or malformed records, but bad data includes a lot more. In this handbook, data expert Q. Ethan McCallum has gathered 19 colleagues from every corner of the data arena to reveal how they’ve recovered from nasty data problems.

From cranky storage to poor representation to misguided policy, there are many paths to bad data. Bottom line? Bad data is data that gets in the way. This book explains effective ways to get around it.

Among the many topics covered, you’ll discover how to:

  • Test drive your data to see if it’s ready for analysis
  • Work spreadsheet data into a usable form
  • Handle encoding problems that lurk in text data
  • Develop a successful web-scraping effort
  • Use NLP tools to reveal the real sentiment of online reviews
  • Address cloud computing issues that can impact your analysis effort
  • Avoid policies that create data analysis roadblocks
  • Take a systematic approach to data quality analysis

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Setting the Pace: What Is Bad Data?
Chapter 2. Is It Just Me, or Does This Data Smell Funny?
Chapter 3. Data Intended for Human Consumption, Not Machine Consumption
Chapter 4. Bad Data Lurking in Plain Text
Chapter 5. (Re)Organizing the Web’s Data
Chapter 6. Detecting Liars and the Confused in Contradictory Online Reviews
Chapter 7. Will the Bad Data Please Stand Up?
Chapter 8. Blood, Sweat, and Urine
Chapter 9. When Data and Reality Don’t Match
Chapter 10. Subtle Sources of Bias and Error
Chapter 11. Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good: Is Bad Data Really Bad?
Chapter 12. When Databases Attack: A Guide for When to Stick to Files
Chapter 13. Crouching Table, Hidden Network
Chapter 14. Myths of Cloud Computing
Chapter 15. The Dark Side of Data Science
Chapter 16. How to Feed and Care for Your Machine-Learning Experts
Chapter 17. Data Traceability
Chapter 18. Social Media: Erasable Ink?
Chapter 19. Data Quality Analysis Demystified: Knowing When Your Data Is Good Enough

Book Details

  • Paperback: 264 pages
  • Publisher: O’Reilly Media (November 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1449321887
  • ISBN-13: 978-1449321888
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