Chapter 3 describes a series of issues and steps to prepare the data prior to analysis, including:

• The different sources of data
• Characterizing variables
• Cleaning the data
• Transforming the data
• Segmentation of the data

• Surveys and polls: 
  • Survey Research Methods (Applied Social Research Methods) Third Edition (2002) by F.J. Fowler
  • Designing and Conducting Survey Research: A Comprehensive Guide Third Edition  (2005) by L.M. Rea and R.A. Parker
  • The Survey Research Handbook Third Edition, (2004) by P.L Alreck and R.B. Settle.
     
• Experimental design:
  • Design and Analysis of Experiments Sixth Edition (2005), D.C. Montgomery
  • Experimental Designs Second Edition (1957), W.G. Cochran and G. M. Cox
  • An Introduction to Design of Experiments: A Simplified Approach (1999) by L.B. Barrentine
  • Design of Experiments for Engineers and Scientists (2003) by J. Anthony
     
• Operational databases and data warehouses:
• Databases Demystified: A Self-teaching Guide (2004) by A. Oppel
• The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling Second Edition, (2002)  by R. Kimbal and M. Ross
   
• Principal component analysis:
• Principal Component Analysis Second Edition (2002) by I.T. Jolliffe
• A User’s Guide to Principal Components (2003) by J.E. Jackson
   
• Data preparation:
• Mining Imperfect Data: Dealing With Contamination and Incomplete Records (2005), by R.K. Pearson
• Data Preparation and Data Mining (1999) by D. Pyle
• Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning (2003) by T. Dasu and T. Johnson

• Opening tables
• Searching
• Characterizing
• Removing
• Cleaning
• Transforming
• Segmenting