Data cleaning is the process of preparing data for analysis by removing or modifying data that is incorrect, incomplete, irrelevant, duplicated, or improperly formatted. This data is usually not necessary or helpful when it comes to analyzing data because it may hinder the process or provide inaccurate results.

There are several methods for cleaning data depending on how it is stored along with the answers being sought. Data cleaning is not simply about erasing information to make space for new data, but rather finding a way to maximize a data set’s accuracy without necessarily deleting information. For one, data cleaning includes more actions than removing data, such as fixing spelling and syntax errors, standardizing data sets, and correcting mistakes such as empty fields, missing codes, and identifying duplicate data points.

Data cleaning is considered a foundational element of the data science basics, as it plays an important role in the analytical process and uncovering reliable answers. Most importantly, the goal of data cleaning is to create data sets that are standardized and uniform to allow business intelligence and data analytics tools to easily access and find the right data for each query.