Metadata and cleaning data

Metadata is data about data. A digital photo, for example, may carry metadata about when and where it was taken and what camera was used, and a document may record its author and creation date. Metadata helps people organize, search, and understand data, but it can also reveal more than people realize, such as the location stored in a photo. Before data can be analyzed, it usually needs cleaning: making formats consistent (like standardizing "NY," "New York," and "new york"), removing duplicate records, deciding how to handle missing values, correcting obvious errors, and making sure values fall within expected types and ranges, such as ages that are not negative. Cleaning choices matter, since removing or changing records can itself introduce bias, so good practice is to document every cleaning step so others can check and repeat it.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report