Interpretability
| Characteristic Name: | Interpretability |
| Dimension: | Usability and Interpretability |
| Description: | Data should be interpretable |
| Granularity: | Information object |
| Implementation Type: | Process-based approach |
| Characteristic Type: | Usage |
Verification Metric:
| The number of tasks failed or under performed due to the lack of interpretability of data |
| The number of complaints received due to the lack of interpretability of data |
GuidelinesExamplesDefinitons
The implementation guidelines are guidelines to follow in regard to the characteristic. The scenarios are examples of the implementation
| Guidelines: | Scenario: |
|---|---|
| Standardise the interpretation process by clearly stating the criteria for interpreting results so that an interpretation on one dataset is reproducible | (1) 10% drop in production efficiency is a severe decline which needs quick remedial actions |
| Facilitate the interaction process based on users' task at hand | (1) A traffic light system to indicate the efficiency of a production line to the workers, a detail efficiency report to the production manage, a concise efficiency report for production line supervisors |
| Design the structure of information in such a way that further format conversions are not necessary for interpretations. | (1) A rating scale of (poor good excellent ) is better than (1,2,3) for rate a service level |
| Ensure that information is consistent between units of analysis (organisations, geographical areas, populations in concern etc.) and over time, allowing comparisons to be made. | (1) Number of doctors per person is used to compare the health facilities between regions. (2) Same populations are used over the time to analyse the epidemic growths over the tim |
| Use appropriate visualisation tools to facilitate interpretation of data through comparisons and contrasts | (1) Usage of tree maps , Usage of bar charts, Usage of line graphs |
Validation Metric:
| How mature is the process to maintain the interpretability of data |
These are examples of how the characteristic might occur in a database.
| Example: | Source: |
|---|---|
| when an analyst has data with freshness metric equals to 0, does it mean to have fresh data at hand? What about freshness equals to 10 (suppose, we do not stick to the notion proposed in [23])? Is it even fresher? Similar issues may arise with the notion of age: e.g., with age A(e) = 0, we cannot undoubtedly speak about positive or negative data characteristic because of a semantic meaning of “age” that mostly corresponds to a neutral notion of “period of time” | O. Chayka, T. Palpanas, and P. Bouquet, “Defining and Measuring Data-Driven Quality Dimension of Staleness”, Trento: University of Trento, Technical Report # DISI-12-016, 2012. |
| Consider a database containing orders from customers. A practice for handling complaints and returns is to create an “adjustment” order for backing out the original order and then writing a new order for the corrected information if applicable. This procedure assigns new order numbers to the adjustment and replacement orders. For the accounting department, this is a high-quality database. All of the numbers come out in the wash. For a business analyst trying to determine trends in growth of orders by region, this is a poor-quality database. If the business analyst assumes that each order number represents a distinct order, his analysis will be all wrong. Someone needs to explain the practice and the methods necessary to unravel the data to get to the real numbers (if that is even possible after the fact). | J. E. Olson, “Data Quality: The Accuracy Dimension”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 9 January 2003. |
The Definitions are examples of the characteristic that appear in the sources provided.
| Definition: | Source: |
|---|---|
| Comparability of data refers to the extent to which data is consistent between organisations and over time allowing comparisons to be made. This includes using equivalent reporting periods. | HIQA 2011. International Review of Data Quality Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), Ireland. http://www.hiqa.ie/press-release/2011-04-28-international-review-data-quality. |
| Data is not ambiguous if it allows only one interpretation – anti-example: Song.composer = ‘Johann Strauss’ (father or son?). | KIMBALL, R. & CASERTA, J. 2004. The data warehouse ETL toolkit: practical techniques for extracting. Cleaning, Conforming, and Delivering, Digitized Format, originally published. |
| Comparability aims at measuring the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts and measurement tools/procedures when statistics are compared between geographical areas, non-geographical domains, or over time. | LYON, M. 2008. Assessing Data Quality , Monetary and Financial Statistics. Bank of England. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/ statistics/Documents/ms/articles/art1mar08.pdf. |
| The most important quality characteristic of a format is its appropriateness. One format is more appropriate than another if it is better suited to users’ needs. The appropriateness of the format depends upon two factors: user and medium used. Both are of crucial importance. The abilities of human users and computers to understand data in different formats are vastly different. For example, the human eye is not very good at interpreting some positional formats, such as bar codes, although optical scanning devices are. On the other hand, humans can assimilate much data from a graph, a format that is relatively hard for a computer to interpret. Appropriateness is related to the second quality dimension, interpretability. | REDMAN, T. C. 1997. Data quality for the information age, Artech House, Inc. |
Business rules compliance
| Characteristic Name: | Business rules compliance |
| Dimension: | Validity |
| Description: | Data should comply with business rules |
| Granularity: | Element |
| Implementation Type: | Rule-based approach |
| Characteristic Type: | Declarative |
Verification Metric:
| The number of tasks failed or under performed due to lack of data precision |
| The number of complaints received due to lack of data precision |
GuidelinesExamplesDefinitons
The implementation guidelines are guidelines to follow in regard to the characteristic. The scenarios are examples of the implementation
| Guidelines: | Scenario: |
|---|---|
| Identify data related business rules separately (business rules that determines the value of data elements and business rules that get executed depending on the values of data elements) and organise them into a separate executable data rules engine | (1) The system maintains price routines to handle price related data Element :Discount rate A price routine (procedure) can be maintained to calculate the discount rate considering the rules R1:All registered customers get a discount of 6% |
| Implement a stewardship structure for business rules (parallel to stewardship structure for data) and manage the changes to the rules properly | (1) Sales director is responsible for discounts and his approval is needed to change a discount rate. Only the sales manager can change the rules related to discounts. |
| Maintain an error log to identify the problems resulted in the data rules repository where the problematic data records can be identified precisely | (1) Rules engines |
| Continuously monitor the root causes for the errors recorded in the log and take preventive actions by amending the rules, fixing the technical defects in the system etc. | (1) Some trip data is missing for a particular journey in the go card system and as a result an unacceptable journey duration was resulted. New rules were implemented to process such data using a different criteria |
Validation Metric:
| How mature is the creation and implementation of the data related business rules |
These are examples of how the characteristic might occur in a database.
| Example: | Source: |
|---|---|
| One common example in education is the student school of record. While most students do not change schools during an academic year, many do, especially in urban settings. Thus, the school at which students are tested may not be the school at which they received most of their instruction. Because school-level student achievement measures become increasingly invalid as the number of mobile students increases, many districts will hold schools accountable only for those students who were enrolled for a full academic year. In this case, student achievement measures for a given school lose validity as the percentage of mobile students increases. | J. G. Watson, S. B. Kraemer, and C. A. Thorn, “Data Quality Essentials. Guide to Implementation: Resources for Applied Practice”, August 2009. |
The Definitions are examples of the characteristic that appear in the sources provided.
| Definition: | Source: |
|---|---|
| Determines the extent to which data is not missing important relationship linkages. For example, the launch date for a new product must be valid and must be the first week of any quarter, since all new products are launched in the first week of each quarter. | D. McGilvray, “Executing Data Quality Projects: Ten Steps to Quality Data and Trusted Information”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008. |
| 1) Data values conform to the Specified Business Rules.
2) A derived or calculated data value is Produced Correctly according to a specified Calculation Formula or set of Derivation Rules. |
ENGLISH, L. P. 2009. Information quality applied: Best practices for improving business information, processes and systems, Wiley Publishing. |