Data set

A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data.

Most commonly a data set corresponds to the contents of a single database table, or a single statistical data matrix, where every column of the table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given member of the data set in question. The data set lists values for each of the variables, such as height and weight of an object, for each member of the data set. Each value is known as a datum. The data set may comprise data for one or more members, corresponding to the number of rows.

The term data set may also be used more loosely, to refer to the data in a collection of closely related tables, corresponding to a particular experiment or event. An example of this type is the data sets collected by space agencies performing experiments with instruments aboard space probes.

History

Historically, the term originated in the mainframe field, where it had a well-defined meaning, very close to contemporary computer file.

Properties

Several characteristics define a data set's structure and properties. These include the number and types of the attributes or variables, and various statistical measures applicable to them, such as standard deviation and kurtosis.^[1]

The values may be numbers, such as real numbers or integers, for example representing a person's height in centimeters, but may also be nominal data (i.e., not consisting of numerical values), for example representing a person's ethnicity. More generally, values may be of any of the kinds described as a level of measurement. For each variable, the values are normally all of the same kind. However, there may also be missing values, which must be indicated in some way.

In statistics, data sets usually come from actual observations obtained by sampling a statistical population, and each row corresponds to the observations on one element of that population. Data sets may further be generated by algorithms for the purpose of testing certain kinds of software. Some modern statistical analysis software such as SPSS still present their data in the classical data set fashion. If data is missing or suspicious an imputation method may be used to complete a data set.^[2]

Classic data sets

Several classic data sets have been used extensively in the statistical literature:

• Iris flower data set - multivariate data set introduced by Ronald Fisher (1936).^[3]
• MNIST database - Images of handwritten digits commonly used to test classification, clustering, and image processing algorithms
• Categorical data analysis - Data sets used in the book, An Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis.
• Robust statistics - Data sets used in Robust Regression and Outlier Detection (Rousseeuw and Leroy, 1986). Provided on-line at the University of Cologne.
• Time series - Data used in Chatfield's book, The Analysis of Time Series, are provided on-line by StatLib.
• Extreme values - Data used in the book, An Introduction to the Statistical Modeling of Extreme Values are a snapshot of the data as it was provided on-line by Stuart Coles, the book's author.
• Bayesian Data Analysis - Data used in the book are provided on-line by Andrew Gelman, one of the book's authors.
• The Bupa liver data, used in several papers in the machine learning (data mining) literature.
• Anscombe's quartet Small data set illustrating the importance of graphing the data to avoid statistical fallacies

See also

• Data store
• Interoperability
• Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set (UHDDS)

Notes

1. Jan M. Żytkow, Jan Rauch (1999). Principles of data mining and knowledge discovery. ISBN 978-3-540-66490-1.
2. United Nations Statistical Commission; United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (2007). Statistical Data Editing: Impact on Data Quality: Volume 3 of Statistical Data Editing, Conference of European Statisticians Statistical standards and studies. United Nations Publications. p. 20. ISBN 9211169526. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
3. Fisher, R.A. (1936). "The Use of Multiple Measurements in Taxonomic Problems" (PDF). Annals of Eugenics 7: 179–188. doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.1936.tb02137.x.

External links

• UCI - A machine learning repository
• Datahub - A community-managed home for open data sets
• Research Pipeline - A wiki/website with links to data sets on many different topics.
• StatLib--JASA Data Archive
• Relational data set repository
• Data.gov
• UK Government Public Data
• GCMD - The Global Change Master Directory contains more than 20,000 descriptions of Earth science data sets and services covering all aspects of Earth and environmental sciences.