What Is Data Preprocessing?

Data preprocessing is the task of cleaning and transforming raw data to make it suitable for analysis and modeling. Preprocessing steps include data cleaning, data normalization, and data transformation. The goal of data preprocessing is to improve both the accuracy and efficiency of downstream analysis and modeling.

Raw data often includes missing values and outliers, which can lead to erroneous conclusions during analysis. You can use MATLAB^® to apply data preprocessing techniques such as filling missing data, removing outliers, and smoothing, enabling you to visualize attributes such as magnitude, frequency, and nature of periodicity.

Line chart with missing values and outliers plotted in MATLAB. — MATLAB plot of raw data containing missing values and outliers.

Data Preprocessing Techniques

Data preprocessing techniques can be grouped into three main categories: data cleaning, data transformation, and structural operations. These steps can happen in any order and iteratively.

Data Cleaning

Data cleaning is the process of addressing anomalies in the data set using techniques such as:

Managing outliers: Identifying and then removing outliers, or replacing them with statistically estimated values
Filling missing data: Identifying missing or invalid data points and replacing them with interpolated values
Smoothing: Filtering out noise using techniques such as moving mean, linear regression, and more specialized filtering methods

Line chart of solar irradiance across a 24-hour span highlighting missing values and the need for data preprocessing. — Time-series plot of a solar irradiance raw data set, including missing values.

After data preprocessing, the MATLAB plot of solar irradiance data shows the missing values in the raw data set have been filled. — Solar irradiance data preprocessed with the `fillmissing` function to fill in missing values. (See MATLAB code.)

Data Transformation

Data transformation is the process of modifying a data set into a preferred format by using operations such as:

Normalization and rescaling: Standardizing data sets with different scales into a uniform scale
Detrending: Removing polynomial trends to enhance visibility of variations in the data set

After detrending is applied, the trend bias is eliminated and the detrended data no longer follows the trendline. — Raw data, its trend, and its preprocessed version with trend bias eliminated using the `detrend` function. (See MATLAB code.)

Structural Operations

Structural operations are often used for combining, reorganizing, and categorizing data sets and include:

Joining: Combining two tables or timetables by rows using a common key variable
Stacking and unstacking: Reshaping multidimensional arrays to consolidate or redistribute data within the table, making it easier for analysis
Grouping and binning: Reorganizing the data set to extract valuable insights
Calculating pivot tables: Breaking down large tabular data sets into sub-tables to gain focused information

Data Preprocessing and Data Types

Data preprocessing steps can be different depending on the type of data. Here are three examples of different data preprocessing methods, available for various data types.

Time-Series Data	Tabular Data	Image Data
You can perform a variety of data preprocessing tasks, such as removing missing values, filtering, smoothing, and synchronizing timestamped data with different time steps.	When a table has messy data, you can use different data preprocessing techniques to clean the table by filling in or removing missing values and rearranging table rows and variables in a different order.	Data preprocessing is useful for applications involving images, including AI. You can preprocess your data by resizing or cropping the images, or even by increasing the amount of training data for deep learning models.

Preprocess and Explore Time-Stamped Data	Clean Messy and Missing Data in Tables	Preprocess Images for Deep Learning

Best Practices in Data Preprocessing

Data preprocessing is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It varies based on the characteristics of the data, the machine learning algorithm, and the problem to be solved. Best practices can help when selecting data preprocessing techniques:

Tailoring techniques to fit applications: Selecting appropriate data preprocessing techniques is crucial for achieving reliable and accurate results. Effective data preprocessing techniques often need to be tailored to meet the needs of different applications; for example, techniques will vary significantly in medical imaging applications compared with finance applications. By tailoring data preprocessing techniques to the specific application, the most important features within the input data can be highlighted, creating customized and highly accurate models. This customized approach ensures that the data is optimally prepared for analysis or modeling, leading to more accurate and effective outcomes.
Evaluating the impact: The right data preprocessing techniques can improve model accuracy, efficiency, and interpretability. However, preprocessing techniques can also negatively affect model accuracy in some cases, so it’s essential to evaluate model performance throughout the entire process of building a model. Regularly validating the impact of data preprocessing steps ensures that any adjustments contribute positively to the overall model performance. In healthcare data analysis, for example, normalizing patient laboratory test results and inputting missing values are important steps for data preprocessing. These techniques ensure that each test result contributes equally to predictive models and that analyses are not biased by missing or disproportionately scaled data, leading to more accurate and actionable insights.

Data Preprocessing in Machine Learning Workflows

Data preprocessing is a crucial step in the machine learning pipeline, ensuring that the data set is clean, relevant, and ready for modeling. Properly preprocessed data can significantly improve the performance of machine learning models by providing them with accurate, relevant, and standardized input.

Machine learning workflow: loading raw data, data preprocessing, feature extraction, training the model, evaluating model performance, and making predictions. — Machine learning workflow.

Once you have preprocessed your data in general, you may need to take a few more steps before creating and training a machine learning model. Feature engineering, which follows data preprocessing, is an iterative process of turning raw data into features to be used by machine learning. It encompasses:

Feature extraction turns raw data into information suitable for machine learning algorithms, improving model performance by preserving essential information. This step can be manual, leveraging domain knowledge for specific data types like images, signals, and text, or automated through algorithms or deep learning networks. For example, wavelet scattering is an automated method for extracting features from signals or images, streamlining the transition from data to model development.
Feature transformation changes existing features into new features (predictor variables) while dropping less descriptive ones. Several approaches are available in MATLAB, including principal component analysis (PCA), factor analysis, and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), which help in creating more meaningful features for the model.
Feature selection is a dimensionality reduction technique that selects a subset of features (predictor variables) providing the best predictive power for modeling. MATLAB supports various methods like neighborhood component analysis (NCA), minimum-redundancy maximum-relevancy (MRMR), F-test, and Chi-Square feature selection, ensuring the most relevant features are used in the model.

Various data preprocessing techniques are tailored for different types of machine learning algorithms. These techniques are foundational to preparing data for machine learning models, aiming to improve model accuracy, efficiency, and generalizability across different types of algorithms and use cases.

Preprocessing Technique	Purpose	Applicable to Machine Learning Algorithms
Data Cleaning	Handle missing data, remove outliers, and correct errors	All types
Data Standardization and Normalization	Scale features to ensure uniformity and improve model performance	All types, especially support vector machines (SVMs) and neural networks
Categorical Encoding	Convert categorical variables for use in algorithms	Neural networks, decision trees, forests
Feature Scaling	Adjust the scale of features for distance computation and convergence	SVMs, neural networks, k-nearest neighbor (KNN)
Feature Selection and Transformation	Reduce model complexity, improve interpretability, and model fit	Decision trees, forests, regression models
Dimensionality Reduction	Focus on the most informative aspects by reducing variables	Clustering, PCA

Data Preprocessing with MATLAB

Choosing the right data preprocessing approach is not always obvious. MATLAB provides both interactive capabilities (apps and Live Editor tasks) and high-level functions that make it easy to try different methods and determine which is right for your data. Iterating through different configurations and selecting the optimal settings will help you prepare your data for further analysis.

Interactive Capabilities

The Data Cleaner app enables you to preprocess time-series data without writing code. You can import your data and then clean it, fill in missing data, and remove outliers. You can then save your modified data to the MATLAB workspace for further analysis. You can also automatically generate MATLAB code to document your steps and reproduce them later.

Using the Data Cleaner app in MATLAB to explore and clean time-series data.

How to Clean Your Data Using the Data Cleaner App

Live Editor tasks are simple point-and-click interfaces that you can add directly to your script to perform a specific set of operations. These tasks can be configured interactively to iterate through different settings and identify the optimal configuration for your application. As with the Data Cleaner app, you can also automatically generate MATLAB code to reproduce your work.

You can interactively preprocess data using a sequence of Live Editor tasks such as Clean Missing Data, Clean Outlier Data, and Normalize Data by visualizing the data at each step.

The Data Preprocessing toolbar includes live tasks for cleaning data, finding change points and extrema, removing trends, and normalizing and smoothing data. — Data Preprocessing toolbar in MATLAB with a collection of live tasks.

A screenshot of a Clean Outlier Data task for data preprocessing, with the input data set to A, the cleaning method set to filling outliers by linear interpolation, and the detection method set to median. The resulting plot shows two filled outliers. — Clean Outlier Data Live Editor task detecting outliers using median thresholding and filling them using linear interpolation. (See MATLAB code.)

Using MATLAB Functions

MATLAB provides thousands of high-level, built-in functions for common mathematical, scientific, and engineering calculations, including data preprocessing.

You can start exploring your raw data set by visualizing it in MATLAB. For example, a data set of solar irradiance received on a typical day includes missing values and outliers. Harsh weather conditions could interfere with wireless telemetry transmission, resulting in a raw data set with imperfections.

After data preprocessing, the MATLAB 2D plot of solar irradiance raw input data shows missing values and outliers labeled. — Time-series plot of solar irradiance raw data with its missing values and outliers identified. (See MATLAB code for the isnan and isoutlier functions.)

Five common data preprocessing techniques can be applied to this raw solar irradiance data set using MATLAB.

Data Preprocessing Technique	MATLAB Plot
Addressing Outliers Anomalies in the telemetry data show up as outliers. The outliers are removed using `filloutliers`. You can specify the method used to determine which values are outliers and a fill technique to estimate a value to replace the outlier data point.
Filling Missing Data Loss of communication results in missing data in telemetry. Use `fillmissing` to replace the NULL values in the data set with an estimated value. You can specify interpolation or a moving window–based technique to estimate the missing value.
Smoothing Data Noisy solar irradiance data is removed using `smoothdata`. You can select and specify which smoothing method is best for your data.
Normalize Data Using the `normalize` function, you can easily see that more than 50% of the peak solar irradiance is received between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. in this data set.
Grouping Use `retime` to group the solar irradiance data in 4-hour intervals to identify the mean solar irradiance in those time spans.

Data can be messy, but data preprocessing techniques can help improve data quality and prepare your data for further analysis. See the resources below for more information.

Examples and How To

Cleaning and Preparing Time-Series Data (20:47) - Video
Analyzing Data with MATLAB (2:49) - Video
Cleaning and Analyzing Real-World Sensor Data with MATLAB (36:41) - Video
Auckland University of Technology and University of Auckland Researchers Analyze Dairy Processing Data with Machine Learning - Customer Story
Clean Messy Data and Locate Extrema Using Live Editor Tasks - Example

Software Reference

Data Preprocessing with MATLAB - Documentation
Clean Missing Data Using Live Editor Tasks - Documentation
Clean Outlier Data Using Live Editor Tasks - Documentation

Data Preprocessing with MATLAB