In DM, Data is usually indicated in the attribute-instance format, i.e. every instance (or data record) will have a certain fixed number of attributes (or fields). In Data Mining, attributes and instances are the terms used rather than fields or records, which are traditionally Databases terminologies.
An attribute can have different data formats, which can be summarized in the following hierarchy:
Data can also be classified as static or dynamic (temporal).
Other types of data that we come across in Data Mining applications are:
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Distributed data |
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Textual data |
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Web data (e.g. html pages) |
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Images |
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Audio/Video |
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Metadata (information about the data itself). |