Using OpenRefine

Description

With this book on OpenRefine, managing and cleaning your large datasets suddenly got a lot easier! With a cookbook approach and free datasheets included, you'll quickly and painlessly improve your data managing capabilities.OverviewCreate links between your dataset and others in an instantEffectively transform data with regular expressions and the General Refine Expression LanguageSpot issues in your dataset and take effective action with just a few clicksIn DetailData is supposed to be the new gold, but how can you unlock the value in your data? Managing large datasets used to be a task for specialists, but you don't have to worry about inconsistencies or errors anymore. OpenRefine lets you clean, link, and publish your dataset in a breeze.Using OpenRefine takes you on a practical tour of all the handy features of this well-known data transformation tool. It is a hands-on recipe book that teaches you data techniques by example. Starting from the basics, it gradually transforms you into an OpenRefine expert.This book will teach you all the necessary skills to handle any large dataset and to turn it into high-quality data for the Web. After you learn how to analyze data and spot issues, we'll see how we can solve them to obtain a clean dataset. Messy and inconsistent data is recovered through advanced techniques such as automated clustering. We'll then show extract links from keyword and full-text fields using reconciliation and named-entity extraction.Using OpenRefine is more than a manual: it's a guide stuffed with tips and tricks to get the best out of your data.What you will learn from this bookImport data in various formatsExplore datasets in a matter of secondsApply basic and advanced cell transformationsDeal with cells that contain multiple valuesCreate instantaneous links between datasetsFilter and partition your data easily with regular expressionsUse named-entity extraction on full-text fields to automatically identify topicsPerform advanced data operations with the General Refine Expression LanguageApproachThe book is styled on a Cookbook, containing recipes - combined with free datasets - which will turn readers into proficient OpenRefine users in the fastest possible way.Who this book is written forThis book is targeted at anyone who works on or handles a large amount of data. No prior knowledge of OpenRefine is required, as we start from the very beginning and gradually reveal more advanced features. You don't even need your own dataset, as we provide example data to try out the book's recipes.