NCA-ADS - Data Manipulation and Preparation - Section 1.2

Handle data cleaning and data quality.

Identify and resolve common data quality issues including missing values, duplicates, outliers, and inconsistent types. Choose appropriate imputation or removal strategies based on the distribution and downstream model requirements.

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleData Manipulation and Preparationeasy

A data quality reviewer loads a cuDF DataFrame of customer records and wants a single number per column showing how many entries are missing, so she can decide which columns need imputation. She plans to chain a null-detection step with a per-column total. Which combination of cuDF operations gives the count of missing values in each column?

  • AApply the duplicated operation to mark repeated rows, then total those marks per column to count the missing entries.
  • BApply the isnull operation to produce a boolean mask, then total the True values down each column with a column-wise sum. Correct
  • CApply the unique operation to each column, then total the distinct values to count the missing entries.
  • DApply the describe operation, then read the standard deviation row as the count of missing entries per column.
Combine the cuDF isnull mask with a column-wise sum to count missing values per column. Isnull produces a boolean mask in which True marks each absent entry, and because True counts as 1 under summation, a column-wise sum over that mask returns the exact number of missing values in every column.

Why A is wrong: The duplicated operation flags repeated rows, not absent values, so totalling its marks reports duplication rather than missingness and answers a different question.

Why B is correct: Isnull returns a boolean DataFrame where True marks each missing entry, and summing those booleans down each column counts the missing values per column, which is the requested per-column missingness tally.

Why C is wrong: Unique lists the distinct values in a column, so totalling them measures cardinality; nulls are not counted as a value to sum, and this does not yield a missing-value total.

Why D is wrong: Describe reports summary statistics such as count, mean and standard deviation; standard deviation measures spread, not missingness, so reading it as a null count is incorrect.

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