Preprocessing the Data

Abstract

In this book, we provide tools that are needed to investigate administrative and clinical databases that are routinely collected in the support of patient treatment. Often, these databases are large and require non-traditional methodology to investigate. In addition, as they are collected for purposes other than research, there is considerable preprocessing that is required in order to use the data for the purpose of analysis in order to find important results that can improve the quality of patient care. Therefore, we will show by example just how to preprocess the data, and how non-traditional statistical methods can be used to investigate the data and to extract meaning from the databases. We will show details and programming code necessary to complete the preprocessing, and we will discuss the type of preprocessing necessary to use each statistical method and data mining technique.