Data preparation for data mining

Data preparation is a fundamental stage of data analysis. While a lot of low-quality information is available in various data sources and on the Web, many organizations or companies are interested in how to transform the data into cleaned forms which can be used for high-profit purposes. This goal generates an urgent need for data analysis aimed at cleaning the raw data. In this paper, we first show the importance of data preparation in data analysis, then introduce some research achievements in the area of data preparation. Finally, we suggest some future directions of research and development.