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Mission 10 of 16

Data Cleaning

📋 What it is

Real data is messy — cleaning means fixing typos, filling or flagging missing values, and removing duplicates.

🗣️ Coach says

Before analysis, data usually needs a scrub. Typos, blanks, and duplicate rows quietly wreck results. "Garbage in, garbage out" — a clean dataset is the unglamorous secret behind every trustworthy chart.

🧠 Memory hook

Garbage in → garbage out. CLEAN first: fix typos, handle blanks, drop duplicates. Then analyze.

😂 Giggle

Why did the outlier feel lonely?
Because it didn't fit in with the rest of the data!

😲 Whoa!

Data scientists say they spend up to 80% of their time just CLEANING data — the analysis is the quick part at the end.

✅ Quick check: Why is cleaning data important before analyzing it?

Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.

🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)

Write a list of 8 items with a deliberate typo and a duplicate. Clean it and note what you fixed.

⭐ Do the round to earn your star →
🤸 Brain break: Tidy pause: straighten 3 objects on your desk while saying "fix, fill, de-dupe" — the cleaning steps.