Data Mining Server, Random Rules documentation

Data preparation for Multilayer Clustering

Instances are defined by a set of attribute values. Each instance is presented in one row of the data file.

Attribute values may be nominal and numerical. Examples of valid nominal values are: A, val, and ha_12. Examples of valid numerical values are: 7, -3.1, and -3333.22.

Attribute values may be unknown and they must be explicitly stated by some string whose first character is '?'. Both numerical and nominal attributes may include unknown values.

All instances in one layer must have the same number of attributes as defined by the number of values in the first row of the data file. It means that a formally correct data file will contain N rows with A values, where N is the number of instances and A is the number of attributes. For this server maximal value for N is 1000 and maximal value for A is 1000.

The second layer, if present, must contain the same number of instances in the same order as the first layer. The number of attributes in the second layer may be and typically is different from the number of attributes in the first layer.

Attribute values must be separated my delimiters. Valid delimiters are comma, semi-colon, and one or more spaces. These characters (',', ';', space, and TAB) may not be used within attribute names and values. If, for example, an input value consists of two strings separated by a space then the server will interpret this as two nominal values and the row will have more values than expected. In this situation the server immediately stops with data processing and reports an error. Such situation represents a most often cause of problems with this server.

We have prepared a set of illustrative data files which may be used to see how correct input data files should look like. The instances are 155 countries. In the first layer are 106 export characteristics of the countries for year 2012 while in the second layer are their 105 socio-economic characteristics for the same year. You may download these files to your computer and then send them to the server in order to test its functionality.
Layer1_export_data
Layer2_socio_economic_data
NamesOfInstances_country_identification

Additional information about the illustrative data set:
Commodity_names_in_layer1
World_Bank_indicators_in_layer2