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Unstructured Data
: Data that does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructed data can be text based but can also involve sensor data or data that quantifies some physical object or phenomenon (e.g. images, video, audio, 3d models, etc.). Such data is typically difficult to understand using traditional computer programs. Images are a good example of this. To a computer images are nothing more than an array of numbers representing pixel intensities or colors. Though images are extremely informative to us as human beings, for a computer to make any use of them some form of pre-processing must be run. An example would be to use computer vision to recognize faces within the image and then spit out their locations as numerical values and a textural tag identifying these areas as faces. With information such as this a computer is then more readily able to carry out a search or other process involving the contents of such data.
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Clowder Definitions