Automated Data Preparation (ADP)

Preparing data for analysis is one of the most important steps in any data-mining project—and traditionally, one of the most time consuming. The Automated Data Preparation (ADP) node handles the task for you, analyzing your data and identifying fixes, screening out fields that are problematic or not likely to be useful, deriving new attributes when appropriate, and improving performance through intelligent screening techniques. You can use the node in fully automated fashion, allowing the node to choose and apply fixes, or you can preview the changes before they are made and accept or reject them as desired.

Using the ADP node enables you to make your data ready for data mining quickly and easily, without needing to have prior knowledge of the statistical concepts involved. If you run the node with the default settings, models will tend to build and score more quickly.

This example uses the stream named ADP_basic_demo.str, which references the data file named telco.sav to demonstrate the increased accuracy that may be found by using the default ADP node settings when building models. These files are available from the Demos directory of any IBM® SPSS® Modeler installation. This can be accessed from the IBM SPSS Modeler program group on the Windows Start menu. The ADP_basic_demo.str file is in the streams directory.

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