Okuzeka
Software Engineering vocabulary · Machine Learning and Data Processing

Preprocessing

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˌpriːˈprɑːsesɪŋ/nounCommon term

In software engineering, preprocessing means: The steps that clean and prepare raw data before a model uses it, such as removing duplicates, filling in missing values, resizing images or normalizing text.

In Turkish: ön işleme, veri ön işleme

How it is used

Engineers write preprocessing steps, scripts and pipelines. The same preprocessing must be applied during training and in production; differences between the two are a common source of bugs. The verb is preprocess.

Example sentences

  1. The bug was in preprocessing: production images weren't resized the same way.

  2. On this dataset, preprocessing takes longer than training.

Common collocations

  • data preprocessing
  • preprocessing pipeline
  • preprocessing step
  • text preprocessing
  • featureA piece of functionality that users can see or use, such as a search bar, dark mode or the option to export a report.
  • datasetA collection of examples, such as images, texts or table rows, gathered and organized for training, testing or analyzing a model.
  • data augmentationCreating extra training examples by making small changes to existing ones, such as flipping or cropping images or rephrasing sentences, so that a model sees more variety.
  • tokenizerThe component that splits text into tokens and turns them into numbers a model can read, and that turns the model's output numbers back into text.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Machine Learning and Data Processing

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: