DATA WRANGLING Written and edited by some of the world’s top experts in the field, this exciting new volume provides state-of-the-art research and latest technological breakthroughs in data wrangling, its theoretical concepts, practical applications, and tools for solving everyday problems. Data wrangling is the process of cleaning and unifying messy and complex data sets for easy access and analysis. This process typically includes manually converting and mapping data from one raw form into another format to allow for more convenient consumption and organization of the data. Data wrangling is increasingly ubiquitous at today’s top firms. Data cleaning focuses on removing inaccurate data from your data set whereas data wrangling focuses on transforming the data’s format, typically by converting “raw” data into another format more suitable for use. Data wrangling is a necessary component of any business. Data wrangling solutions are specifically designed and architected to handle diverse, complex data at any scale, including many applications, such as Datameer, Infogix, Paxata, Talend, Tamr, TMMData, and Trifacta. This book synthesizes the processes of data wrangling into a comprehensive overview, with a strong focus on recent and rapidly evolving agile analytic processes in data-driven enterprises, for businesses and other enterprises to use to find solutions for their everyday problems and practical applications. Whether for the veteran engineer, scientist, or other industry professional, this book is a must have for any library.

A key task that any aspiring data-driven organization needs to learn is data wrangling, the process of converting raw data into something truly useful. This practical guide provides business analysts with an overview of various data wrangling techniques and tools, and puts the practice of data wrangling into context by asking, "What are you trying to do and why?" Wrangling data consumes roughly 50-80% of an analyst’s time before any kind of analysis is possible. Written by key executives at Trifacta, this book walks you through the wrangling process by exploring several factors—time, granularity, scope, and structure—that you need to consider as you begin to work with data. You’ll learn a shared language and a comprehensive understanding of data wrangling, with an emphasis on recent agile analytic processes used by many of today’s data-driven organizations. Appreciate the importance—and the satisfaction—of wrangling data the right way. Understand what kind of data is available Choose which data to use and at what level of detail Meaningfully combine multiple sources of data Decide how to distill the results to a size and shape that can drive downstream analysis