Facilitating data preprocessing by a generic framework: a proposal for clustering

Clustering is among the most popular data mining algorithm families. Before applying clustering algorithms to datasets, it is usually necessary to preprocess the data properly. Data preprocessing is a crucial, still neglected step in data mining. Although preprocessing techniques and algorithms are well-known, the preprocessing process is very complex and takes usually a lot of time. Instead of handling preprocessing more systematically, it is usually undervalued, i.e. more emphasis is put on choosing the appropriate clustering algorithm and setting its parameters. In our opinion, this is not because preprocessing is less important, but because it is difficult to choose the best sequence of preprocessing algorithms. We argue that it is important to better standardize this process so it is performed efficiently. Therefore, this paper proposes a generic framework for data preprocessing. It is based on a survey with data mining experts, as well as a literature and software review. The framework enables pipelining preprocessing algorithms and methods which facilitate further automated preprocessing design and the selection of a suitable preprocessing stream. The proposed framework is easily extendible, so it can be applied to other data mining algorithm families that have their own idiosyncrasies.