What is Data Preprocessing?

As we collect data from our game, we’ll receive a stream of event logs, sometimes with the location and/or timestamps of all the actions that players have performed. We may also receive contextual data from game clients, platforms, or servers. Data preprocessing is the action we need to take before analyzing the data. This means improving the quality of the data and removing any inconsistencies. Preprocessing can be performed before or after the feature definition stage.

Preprocessing is absolutely vital. Data analysis is only as good as the data that is being analyzed, and most algorithms assume the data to be noise-free.